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trennelsI had originally planned to go through to chapter 7 this week, but that turned out to make for a very large volume of commentary, so I think I'll stop at Chapter 6, if that's all right with everyone: I think that leaves us with plenty of material to think about, and if the discussion spills over, no harm done. I'll begin with Chapter 7 next week in any case.
(i)
Oldport St. Annes is sufficiently distant from Byfleet that Nicola finds it useful to cycle there. This might be useful information as we try to plot where we are along this fictionalised coast.
I'm going to quote this bit in full, because reasons:
It's worth noting that one of Forest's most idealized characters (he's by no means perfect, and to that we will come) has a working-class background, though mitigated (natch) by an Oxford education. That in itself is pretty remarkable: he's not just a grammar-school boy, but a working-class grammar-school boy: they can't have been thick on the ground at Oxford in the mid to late 30s. You wonder also about the struggle he must have had to get a secondary education, still less a university one, which perhaps explains the return to Oldport to put in the years on the Golden Enterprise that he missed in the process of getting educated, though his apparent lack of ambition is, of course, not quite what it seems. Thoughts on Robert? (Personally, I can be just as unreasonable about him as I am about Giles Marlow, but in the other direction.)
Nicola and Robert's conversation about Foley is a favourite. I love Nicola's wish that Robert should like Foley, and her bemusement when she discovers their relationship is complex and vexed. There's furthermore a distinct parallel between Nicola's good judgement of character and Peter's poor one in the men they choose to admire, though this may end up giving Peter an advantage later in his ability to anticipate some of Foley's actions. But there's a distinct implication that Robert's own judgement of his friends is (or was) of the Peter kind: there's an intriguing suggestion of compulsiveness in 'sometimes you find yourself involved with someone with whom you have all the ties of affection and habit, but for whom you have no real liking.' And his anxiety to move off the topic of Lewis in particular to Foleys in general seems to support the idea of some dysfunctional undercurrent there. We will learn more later, of course, about the wartime incident that may have ended their friendship for good.
The details about the historical Foleys are similarly enjoyable. Forest does Fabian's suicide with nice subtlety, I think: the older end of her readership no doubt meant to recognise that was no mistake, sir (whether Nicola does at this moment I don't know--she certainly will by the end of the book--but it's a lovely illustration of Robert's tact in a passage that is also noisy with foreshadowing.)
The sketch map of the lighthouse will prove useful. How plausible do we find the 'short-cut'? (Though if we suspend our disbelief that no-one else in the two St Annes knows about it, it's a wonderful suggestion that the friendship between Anquetil and Foley was a whole lot closer than he's letting on.)
My affection for people who can have arguments over someone else's long-dead ancestor, and those who understand them because of their passionate attachments to Nelson, knows no bounds.
Anquetil's ditty is a nice bit of atmospheric, that comes back in distinctly sinister form later on. "Or so I've been told. I've never tried it myself," is a superb bit of intelligence-officer speak, of course we don't know that Anquetil was present when Foley played his nasty trick on the unpleasant and influential relative (headcanons for who that is, do we have them?) but we imagine he wasn't far away.
Anquetil's views on the control of sea-sickness seem a bit robustly unhelpful; there's only one person in this novel who's sympathetic and competent in dealing with the ailment, as it happens.
(ii)
The conference between the siblings is very nicely done, I think: all the little character details--Ginty's manoeuvring her way out of responsibility, Nicola's stubborn desire to keep Anquetil for herself (oh Nick, I feel ya) and her determination not to appear cowardly, Lawrie's teasing and putting on voices, Peter's ruffled dignity, which seems finally to sway things: had Nicola not made her gaffe about Foley being around and (worse) the "lily-livered loon" remark, one senses Peter might have taken her side, and swung it for doing something else that day. Nicola not being able to make the Foleys sound as convincingly villainous as Anquetil did, and in the process rather romanticising them.
(iii)
The comparison of Foley to the sea rat in Wind in the Willows: how gorgeous. The building and relaxation of tensions that goes on here is quite sophisticated, I think: Nicola's apprehensions, then the happier interlude on the crow's nest, followed by the sinister fog. As the children explore, it becomes clear Mariners is quite a grand house (underlining the class difference between Anquetil and Foley).
"Peter made an effort to imagine Lieutenant L.P. Foley, R.N., at eight years old." Well, if Peter can't do it, I think someone should. This has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt.
And the discovery of the cellar: Ginty's calustrophobia, Nick's perspicacity in divining the signs of habitation. (I know the Daily Mirror of the late 40s was a different beast from the current paper, but still rather infra-dig for a someone of his social class, no? Newspaper choices in Forest are odd, I think: in Falconer's Lure we find the Marlows take the Manchester Guardian, which again, different beast from its subsequent incarnations, but I'd have expected the Times.)
Foley keeps his Topp Sekrit Spy papers in Fabian's deed box, which has a broken lock, rather than in a more modern and secure container. Oh, Lewis. (What does the d. N. stand for?)
It's a lovely detail that it's Lawrie-the-fantasist who immediately grasps the truth of the situation, precisely because she is a fantasist--this is picked up and developed in the next chapter.
Ginty's fears and fantasies are marvellous too: her feeling that she might jinx her chances of the diving cup by imagining success; her claustrophobia becoming worse in retrospect than the original experience was; her panic. We'll revisit how the aftermath of trauma is handled by the Marlows a bit in Falconer's Lure (clue: not well) and there are suggestions here too that the family handling of an unfortunate experience has allowed Ginty's claustrophobia to blossom.
"to Lawrie films and plays were never quite pretence; they were something [...] which went on with a particular life of their own [...] When people burgled and spied and murdered in real life it was [...] because the special life of the cinema and theatre had overlapped the ordinary, safe school-and-home life..." I'm struck by how similar, and how different this is from Nicola's absorption in fictional worlds: later in the series, Nick is revealed to have the fanwriter's mentality, noting that Hornblower and Ramage are contemporaries (it is a firm part of my headcanon that Nicola tries writing fanfic, but manages rather to embarrass herself by so doing and gives up.) And of course there will be more discussion of fiction/reality than you can shake a stick at in Peter's Room.
Lawrie "almost enjoying herself", and making notes for future performances is priceless; even when the danger of her situation dawns, she still thinks in terms of narrative.
But Lawrie, unlike her older sister (of whom we're neatly reminded when Lawrie wishes she were Ginty--not just that she could climb like Ginty, but that she were Ginty--an interesting insight into the way Lawrie sees character and attributes), is resourceful in a crisis: she thinks clearly despite her fear, and (because of her grounding in films and plays) anticipates dangers with a fair degree of accuracy. We also note that her knot-tying experience from Nicola and Guides has served her fairly well. Her flight across the fog-bound fields is a great bit of colour-writing. It's interesting that while she does cry (not unreasonable in a 12 year old, under the circs) she can control her tears pretty well: at odds with what we're told elsewhere.
I think the episode on the bus is interesting: a nice bit of tension and relaxation of it there too. (Notable that Lawrie hasn't her twin's scruples about fare-dodging.) A thing I find curious in Forest is her conflation of untidy appearance with the appearance of a lack of social privilege. In my experience, that isn't the way social class markers work at all. (To this we will return in the context of The Thuggery Affair, again wrt to Lawrie, and I think Forest gets it a bit wrong there too, in not understanding how working-class dress-codes work.) That Lawrie is of the social class to be staying at the Majestic would, I think, be obvious as soon as she speaks, however dishevelled she is, and she says enough to make her "posh" accent noticeable, surely? Again, in my experience, distressed children who look grubby but speak posh attract sympathetic attention because people assume something has gone wrong, whereas less privileged accents and scruffy appearance are more likely to read as delinquent. But maybe sympathy would have been forthcoming eventually had Lawrie not panicked and bolted, which is important for Plot Purposes...
By the way, does Robert Anquetil ever sleep? He surely should be in bed during the day, given that he works nights, counter-espionagin' and fishin' and all that.
Am I unreasonably endeared that Whittier calls Robert 'Robbie'? I am. Moving swiftly along. (I also adore their doodling.)
The spy plot unfolds, I think, with some nice light-touch detail ("The Abbeville business"--fic plz). One does feel that Forest is laying it on a bit thick in making her villains former-Nazis-working-for-the-Russians: all bases covered! But it's done with a nice eye for idiom, I think: Whittier and Anquetil come across about as blackly humorous as you could make them in a book with this sort of target market.
I find it a little tricky to work out the precise timeline involved in the spy plot. Given that no career is mentioned for Anquetil between finishing Oxford and joining up, I'm assuming he did both in 1939, aged probably 22, giving him a birthdate in 1917, making him 31 at the time of the action, assuming it is 1948. I'd put his official demob date then in 1946 (though he's clearly gone on working for intelligence, but presumably in a civilian and reasonably light-touch capacity) at which point he returned to Oldport to help his father on the Golden Enterprise. That's also perhaps the year that Foley's spying began--it's unlikely to have begun before 1946, or am I wrong about that? I'm just taking the Iron Curtain speech as a rough stepping-off point. The Admiralty noticed the leak about a year before the action of the novel (i.e. spring 1947), and a little more time to make sure, at which point Anquetil is put on the case because of his local knowledge. That suggests that it really is lack of ambition (or guilt) which propels him back to Oldport after the war. Unless there is a lot of U-Boat activity around there all the time...or I have my demob calculations wrong. Thoughts?
I'm interested in the description of Ida Cross: a hostile depiction of a socialist? Stringy hair and specs, frumpy hikers' gear? Whereas Lewis, who I imagine as rather devastating, I think just because of the grey eyes and thick dark lashes, as Nicola says his face is otherwise ordinary, has no motive except the psychopathic one of because he can.
The question of Mrs Marlow not being able to be sure which twin is which has come up in this comm before, I believe. But people might have thoughts there, though my own feeling is that Forest doesn't seem very interested in following that line of misidentification-drama.
'The little corpusses?' Oh Whittier. This is relatively strong meat, I sense, given that these are meant to be the good guys. I think had I read this as a child I would have taken it in my stride, however, and indeed been rather thrilled at the cool dark humour of it. And Forest does make clear that to an extent it's a front: Whittier is worried about the children. Still, nicely unsentimental.
Whittier's offer to let Anquetil off the investigation allows for a nice bit of exploration of Anquetil and Foley's friendship. Whittier must trust Anquetil very securely, given that there's an ethical question over his continued participation in an action intended to apprehend a lifelong friend (the Admiralty clearly didn't foresee, on sending the local chap in, the very real possibility that he'd be trying to catch somebody he knew fairly well: oh well, bureaucrats.) There's also a suggestion, though, that perhaps Anquetil hasn't disclosed until this moment, quite how long-standing his friendship with Foley was. And Robert's determination to see it through bespeaks closeness rather than its opposite, albeit of a dysfunctional kind. We also have Robert's testimony of Lewis's lack of cruelty; which contrasts with his affectless motives for spying in the first place.
"It seemed certain, thought Anquetil, with a curious sense of personal loss, that if it were Lewis who had taken the Talisman, he had gone and did not mean to return." Italics mine; again the suggestion that Anquetil is lying to himself, even, perhaps, about how much Foley means to him. I also find his slightly hopeless back-of-the-envelope calculations curiously touching. Anquetil's caution and responsibility means that he's often thrown into positions of relative powerlessness and passivity in the novel, and refuses his one opportunity for confrontation with Foley out of a sense of the futility of heroics (or that's what he tells himself). He's as an unusual model of heroism as Lewis is of villainy. But nor do he and Whittier fit the stereotype of bumbling, disbelieving adults that's found in a lot of children's adventure fiction. They're involved, aware, and responsible, and their concern for the Marlows is realistically (and quite audaciously?) represented as a fairly detached professionalism.
Isn't it convenient that it's always the plank bearing a telling fragment of the boat's name that's washed up? Forest nods to this cinematic device again in Run Away Home.
And with a cliffhanger, we switch scenes to Talisman.
(i)
Peter's doubts and disbeliefs about Foley--he's still trying not to believe in his treachery--are nicely done: that he only absolutely, finally makes up his mind when he confirms it to Ginty is a fine touch. Foley's blistering tickings-off once again manifest themselves--and Ginty is still suffering the consequences: she is really not being the Responsible Eldest at all here! Peter's insights into Foley's motivations suggest a further parallel between them.
As Foley gets out the charts, people might want to discuss exactly where they think the action of the novel takes place. I have some thoughts on it from a discussion (well, that's rather a grandiose word for what I was doing, which was the internet equivalent of nodding in what I hoped was an informed manner) with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
legionseagle, but we might canvass opinions first, and then perhaps create a separate post for discussion of the sometimes puzzling geography of the novel.
(ii)
Another favourite passage here: the contrasts between Nicola and Peter's view of the same events is tremendous fun. I'm curious about Nicola's relative unfamiliarity with a Morse buzzer: she and Lawrie are represented as competent Morse code users in Autumn Term, albeit with torches rather than buzzers, as a result of Nicola's naval interests rather than Guides.
Foley's sinister solicitude is both touching and chilling: it's worth noting that in comparison to Geoff and Giles Marlow, he's sympathetic and competent in the treatment of sea-sickness, allowing Nicola into the cockpit so she can keep her eye on the horizon, keeping her warm, not getting disgusted or contemptuous when she is actually sick, and so forth. As a teacher, perhaps he has more experience at dealing with it. Him force-feeding her brandy is fairly hair-raising, though (one thinks of Selby's anxieties immediately), and foreshadows a later episode.
However, his overall kindness makes Nicola's determination to think poorly of his use of the engine in comparison to her unsympathetic family members' preference for sail rather ironic (though Nicola is herself prejudiced in favour of sail already) though understandable.
The glimpse of how Foley sees his friendship with Anquetil is tantalising: 'Foley smiled again, still with that little half-smile "So he has," he said. "A very long time. Faithful Robert."' Thoughts? (I know what I think, I want to know what you think *grin*)
Nicola's reflections on whether people would believe Lawrie are a nice reflection her twin's universally acknowledged propensity to fantasy, but perhaps also nod to the usual children's adventure story idea of the children not being believed. "Nicola made a mental resolve that Lawrie shouldn't be allowed to practise her voices ever again": clearly unsuccessful! Though we hear less of her exercising them on her family, perhaps, in subsequent books.
Nicola acts on her plans for thwarting Foley while Peter only contemplates them: but it's made clear that this results from Nicola's relative inexperience, I think. Peter's judgment is often awry, but his training least him to see risks more clearly than Nicola, who has courage and resourcefulness but perhaps less good sense than she should, here. I love the use of the ditty as a motif which gives Nicola the idea, but later also betrays her.
(iii)
Nicola's confused feelings of sympathy for Foley at having had his boat wrecked, and their recension when she sees his violence towards Peter is something I really enjoy. I think that's the beauty of the novel and of Forest in general: there's almost no feeling that is unmixed, almost nothing without its irony or parallel. Here's another: Ginty, reduced to misery by Foley's ticking off, is calm when Talisman is being wrecked (though you could argue she's just too shocked to know what's up).
And we close with the arrival at the lighthouse.
Looking forward to your thoughts. Have at it!
(i)
Oldport St. Annes is sufficiently distant from Byfleet that Nicola finds it useful to cycle there. This might be useful information as we try to plot where we are along this fictionalised coast.
I'm going to quote this bit in full, because reasons:
Robert Anquetil was the local disappointment. Everyone who had known him while he was growing up and progressing by way of scholarships from elementary school to grammar school, and from grammar school to Oxford, where he had taken a Double First, had forecast a brilliant future for him. During the war, first in the R.N.V.R. and later in the Commandos, he had won the D.S.O. and bar; which, the local people thought, would be such a help to him when the war was over. And then, as soon as he was demobilized, he had come back to be a good son, and help his father in the Golden Enterprise. But when his father died, no-one could say that any more, because there was no-one left for Robert to be a good son to. And soon it seemed as if Robert meant to spend the rest of his life as a fisherman at St-Anne’s-Oldport and not bother himself with being Prime Minister or anything of that sort. Only people like Nicola, and the small boys he took out in the Golden Enterprise so they could learn at first hand what handling a boat was like, thought that showed uncommon good sense.
It's worth noting that one of Forest's most idealized characters (he's by no means perfect, and to that we will come) has a working-class background, though mitigated (natch) by an Oxford education. That in itself is pretty remarkable: he's not just a grammar-school boy, but a working-class grammar-school boy: they can't have been thick on the ground at Oxford in the mid to late 30s. You wonder also about the struggle he must have had to get a secondary education, still less a university one, which perhaps explains the return to Oldport to put in the years on the Golden Enterprise that he missed in the process of getting educated, though his apparent lack of ambition is, of course, not quite what it seems. Thoughts on Robert? (Personally, I can be just as unreasonable about him as I am about Giles Marlow, but in the other direction.)
Nicola and Robert's conversation about Foley is a favourite. I love Nicola's wish that Robert should like Foley, and her bemusement when she discovers their relationship is complex and vexed. There's furthermore a distinct parallel between Nicola's good judgement of character and Peter's poor one in the men they choose to admire, though this may end up giving Peter an advantage later in his ability to anticipate some of Foley's actions. But there's a distinct implication that Robert's own judgement of his friends is (or was) of the Peter kind: there's an intriguing suggestion of compulsiveness in 'sometimes you find yourself involved with someone with whom you have all the ties of affection and habit, but for whom you have no real liking.' And his anxiety to move off the topic of Lewis in particular to Foleys in general seems to support the idea of some dysfunctional undercurrent there. We will learn more later, of course, about the wartime incident that may have ended their friendship for good.
The details about the historical Foleys are similarly enjoyable. Forest does Fabian's suicide with nice subtlety, I think: the older end of her readership no doubt meant to recognise that was no mistake, sir (whether Nicola does at this moment I don't know--she certainly will by the end of the book--but it's a lovely illustration of Robert's tact in a passage that is also noisy with foreshadowing.)
The sketch map of the lighthouse will prove useful. How plausible do we find the 'short-cut'? (Though if we suspend our disbelief that no-one else in the two St Annes knows about it, it's a wonderful suggestion that the friendship between Anquetil and Foley was a whole lot closer than he's letting on.)
My affection for people who can have arguments over someone else's long-dead ancestor, and those who understand them because of their passionate attachments to Nelson, knows no bounds.
Anquetil's ditty is a nice bit of atmospheric, that comes back in distinctly sinister form later on. "Or so I've been told. I've never tried it myself," is a superb bit of intelligence-officer speak, of course we don't know that Anquetil was present when Foley played his nasty trick on the unpleasant and influential relative (headcanons for who that is, do we have them?) but we imagine he wasn't far away.
Anquetil's views on the control of sea-sickness seem a bit robustly unhelpful; there's only one person in this novel who's sympathetic and competent in dealing with the ailment, as it happens.
(ii)
The conference between the siblings is very nicely done, I think: all the little character details--Ginty's manoeuvring her way out of responsibility, Nicola's stubborn desire to keep Anquetil for herself (oh Nick, I feel ya) and her determination not to appear cowardly, Lawrie's teasing and putting on voices, Peter's ruffled dignity, which seems finally to sway things: had Nicola not made her gaffe about Foley being around and (worse) the "lily-livered loon" remark, one senses Peter might have taken her side, and swung it for doing something else that day. Nicola not being able to make the Foleys sound as convincingly villainous as Anquetil did, and in the process rather romanticising them.
(iii)
The comparison of Foley to the sea rat in Wind in the Willows: how gorgeous. The building and relaxation of tensions that goes on here is quite sophisticated, I think: Nicola's apprehensions, then the happier interlude on the crow's nest, followed by the sinister fog. As the children explore, it becomes clear Mariners is quite a grand house (underlining the class difference between Anquetil and Foley).
"Peter made an effort to imagine Lieutenant L.P. Foley, R.N., at eight years old." Well, if Peter can't do it, I think someone should. This has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt.
And the discovery of the cellar: Ginty's calustrophobia, Nick's perspicacity in divining the signs of habitation. (I know the Daily Mirror of the late 40s was a different beast from the current paper, but still rather infra-dig for a someone of his social class, no? Newspaper choices in Forest are odd, I think: in Falconer's Lure we find the Marlows take the Manchester Guardian, which again, different beast from its subsequent incarnations, but I'd have expected the Times.)
Foley keeps his Topp Sekrit Spy papers in Fabian's deed box, which has a broken lock, rather than in a more modern and secure container. Oh, Lewis. (What does the d. N. stand for?)
It's a lovely detail that it's Lawrie-the-fantasist who immediately grasps the truth of the situation, precisely because she is a fantasist--this is picked up and developed in the next chapter.
Ginty's fears and fantasies are marvellous too: her feeling that she might jinx her chances of the diving cup by imagining success; her claustrophobia becoming worse in retrospect than the original experience was; her panic. We'll revisit how the aftermath of trauma is handled by the Marlows a bit in Falconer's Lure (clue: not well) and there are suggestions here too that the family handling of an unfortunate experience has allowed Ginty's claustrophobia to blossom.
"to Lawrie films and plays were never quite pretence; they were something [...] which went on with a particular life of their own [...] When people burgled and spied and murdered in real life it was [...] because the special life of the cinema and theatre had overlapped the ordinary, safe school-and-home life..." I'm struck by how similar, and how different this is from Nicola's absorption in fictional worlds: later in the series, Nick is revealed to have the fanwriter's mentality, noting that Hornblower and Ramage are contemporaries (it is a firm part of my headcanon that Nicola tries writing fanfic, but manages rather to embarrass herself by so doing and gives up.) And of course there will be more discussion of fiction/reality than you can shake a stick at in Peter's Room.
Lawrie "almost enjoying herself", and making notes for future performances is priceless; even when the danger of her situation dawns, she still thinks in terms of narrative.
But Lawrie, unlike her older sister (of whom we're neatly reminded when Lawrie wishes she were Ginty--not just that she could climb like Ginty, but that she were Ginty--an interesting insight into the way Lawrie sees character and attributes), is resourceful in a crisis: she thinks clearly despite her fear, and (because of her grounding in films and plays) anticipates dangers with a fair degree of accuracy. We also note that her knot-tying experience from Nicola and Guides has served her fairly well. Her flight across the fog-bound fields is a great bit of colour-writing. It's interesting that while she does cry (not unreasonable in a 12 year old, under the circs) she can control her tears pretty well: at odds with what we're told elsewhere.
I think the episode on the bus is interesting: a nice bit of tension and relaxation of it there too. (Notable that Lawrie hasn't her twin's scruples about fare-dodging.) A thing I find curious in Forest is her conflation of untidy appearance with the appearance of a lack of social privilege. In my experience, that isn't the way social class markers work at all. (To this we will return in the context of The Thuggery Affair, again wrt to Lawrie, and I think Forest gets it a bit wrong there too, in not understanding how working-class dress-codes work.) That Lawrie is of the social class to be staying at the Majestic would, I think, be obvious as soon as she speaks, however dishevelled she is, and she says enough to make her "posh" accent noticeable, surely? Again, in my experience, distressed children who look grubby but speak posh attract sympathetic attention because people assume something has gone wrong, whereas less privileged accents and scruffy appearance are more likely to read as delinquent. But maybe sympathy would have been forthcoming eventually had Lawrie not panicked and bolted, which is important for Plot Purposes...
By the way, does Robert Anquetil ever sleep? He surely should be in bed during the day, given that he works nights, counter-espionagin' and fishin' and all that.
Am I unreasonably endeared that Whittier calls Robert 'Robbie'? I am. Moving swiftly along. (I also adore their doodling.)
The spy plot unfolds, I think, with some nice light-touch detail ("The Abbeville business"--fic plz). One does feel that Forest is laying it on a bit thick in making her villains former-Nazis-working-for-the-Russians: all bases covered! But it's done with a nice eye for idiom, I think: Whittier and Anquetil come across about as blackly humorous as you could make them in a book with this sort of target market.
I find it a little tricky to work out the precise timeline involved in the spy plot. Given that no career is mentioned for Anquetil between finishing Oxford and joining up, I'm assuming he did both in 1939, aged probably 22, giving him a birthdate in 1917, making him 31 at the time of the action, assuming it is 1948. I'd put his official demob date then in 1946 (though he's clearly gone on working for intelligence, but presumably in a civilian and reasonably light-touch capacity) at which point he returned to Oldport to help his father on the Golden Enterprise. That's also perhaps the year that Foley's spying began--it's unlikely to have begun before 1946, or am I wrong about that? I'm just taking the Iron Curtain speech as a rough stepping-off point. The Admiralty noticed the leak about a year before the action of the novel (i.e. spring 1947), and a little more time to make sure, at which point Anquetil is put on the case because of his local knowledge. That suggests that it really is lack of ambition (or guilt) which propels him back to Oldport after the war. Unless there is a lot of U-Boat activity around there all the time...or I have my demob calculations wrong. Thoughts?
I'm interested in the description of Ida Cross: a hostile depiction of a socialist? Stringy hair and specs, frumpy hikers' gear? Whereas Lewis, who I imagine as rather devastating, I think just because of the grey eyes and thick dark lashes, as Nicola says his face is otherwise ordinary, has no motive except the psychopathic one of because he can.
The question of Mrs Marlow not being able to be sure which twin is which has come up in this comm before, I believe. But people might have thoughts there, though my own feeling is that Forest doesn't seem very interested in following that line of misidentification-drama.
'The little corpusses?' Oh Whittier. This is relatively strong meat, I sense, given that these are meant to be the good guys. I think had I read this as a child I would have taken it in my stride, however, and indeed been rather thrilled at the cool dark humour of it. And Forest does make clear that to an extent it's a front: Whittier is worried about the children. Still, nicely unsentimental.
Whittier's offer to let Anquetil off the investigation allows for a nice bit of exploration of Anquetil and Foley's friendship. Whittier must trust Anquetil very securely, given that there's an ethical question over his continued participation in an action intended to apprehend a lifelong friend (the Admiralty clearly didn't foresee, on sending the local chap in, the very real possibility that he'd be trying to catch somebody he knew fairly well: oh well, bureaucrats.) There's also a suggestion, though, that perhaps Anquetil hasn't disclosed until this moment, quite how long-standing his friendship with Foley was. And Robert's determination to see it through bespeaks closeness rather than its opposite, albeit of a dysfunctional kind. We also have Robert's testimony of Lewis's lack of cruelty; which contrasts with his affectless motives for spying in the first place.
"It seemed certain, thought Anquetil, with a curious sense of personal loss, that if it were Lewis who had taken the Talisman, he had gone and did not mean to return." Italics mine; again the suggestion that Anquetil is lying to himself, even, perhaps, about how much Foley means to him. I also find his slightly hopeless back-of-the-envelope calculations curiously touching. Anquetil's caution and responsibility means that he's often thrown into positions of relative powerlessness and passivity in the novel, and refuses his one opportunity for confrontation with Foley out of a sense of the futility of heroics (or that's what he tells himself). He's as an unusual model of heroism as Lewis is of villainy. But nor do he and Whittier fit the stereotype of bumbling, disbelieving adults that's found in a lot of children's adventure fiction. They're involved, aware, and responsible, and their concern for the Marlows is realistically (and quite audaciously?) represented as a fairly detached professionalism.
Isn't it convenient that it's always the plank bearing a telling fragment of the boat's name that's washed up? Forest nods to this cinematic device again in Run Away Home.
And with a cliffhanger, we switch scenes to Talisman.
(i)
Peter's doubts and disbeliefs about Foley--he's still trying not to believe in his treachery--are nicely done: that he only absolutely, finally makes up his mind when he confirms it to Ginty is a fine touch. Foley's blistering tickings-off once again manifest themselves--and Ginty is still suffering the consequences: she is really not being the Responsible Eldest at all here! Peter's insights into Foley's motivations suggest a further parallel between them.
As Foley gets out the charts, people might want to discuss exactly where they think the action of the novel takes place. I have some thoughts on it from a discussion (well, that's rather a grandiose word for what I was doing, which was the internet equivalent of nodding in what I hoped was an informed manner) with
legionseagle, but we might canvass opinions first, and then perhaps create a separate post for discussion of the sometimes puzzling geography of the novel.(ii)
Another favourite passage here: the contrasts between Nicola and Peter's view of the same events is tremendous fun. I'm curious about Nicola's relative unfamiliarity with a Morse buzzer: she and Lawrie are represented as competent Morse code users in Autumn Term, albeit with torches rather than buzzers, as a result of Nicola's naval interests rather than Guides.
Foley's sinister solicitude is both touching and chilling: it's worth noting that in comparison to Geoff and Giles Marlow, he's sympathetic and competent in the treatment of sea-sickness, allowing Nicola into the cockpit so she can keep her eye on the horizon, keeping her warm, not getting disgusted or contemptuous when she is actually sick, and so forth. As a teacher, perhaps he has more experience at dealing with it. Him force-feeding her brandy is fairly hair-raising, though (one thinks of Selby's anxieties immediately), and foreshadows a later episode.
However, his overall kindness makes Nicola's determination to think poorly of his use of the engine in comparison to her unsympathetic family members' preference for sail rather ironic (though Nicola is herself prejudiced in favour of sail already) though understandable.
The glimpse of how Foley sees his friendship with Anquetil is tantalising: 'Foley smiled again, still with that little half-smile "So he has," he said. "A very long time. Faithful Robert."' Thoughts? (
Nicola's reflections on whether people would believe Lawrie are a nice reflection her twin's universally acknowledged propensity to fantasy, but perhaps also nod to the usual children's adventure story idea of the children not being believed. "Nicola made a mental resolve that Lawrie shouldn't be allowed to practise her voices ever again": clearly unsuccessful! Though we hear less of her exercising them on her family, perhaps, in subsequent books.
Nicola acts on her plans for thwarting Foley while Peter only contemplates them: but it's made clear that this results from Nicola's relative inexperience, I think. Peter's judgment is often awry, but his training least him to see risks more clearly than Nicola, who has courage and resourcefulness but perhaps less good sense than she should, here. I love the use of the ditty as a motif which gives Nicola the idea, but later also betrays her.
(iii)
Nicola's confused feelings of sympathy for Foley at having had his boat wrecked, and their recension when she sees his violence towards Peter is something I really enjoy. I think that's the beauty of the novel and of Forest in general: there's almost no feeling that is unmixed, almost nothing without its irony or parallel. Here's another: Ginty, reduced to misery by Foley's ticking off, is calm when Talisman is being wrecked (though you could argue she's just too shocked to know what's up).
And we close with the arrival at the lighthouse.
Looking forward to your thoughts. Have at it!
Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 09:41 am (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 09:58 am (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 10:09 am (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 11:57 am (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 12:19 pm (UTC)(To quote one of Mary Renault's most useful phrases, I'm not one to call three glasses of wine an orgy myself, but Guy Burgess....)
Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 12:43 pm (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 12:46 pm (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 01:13 pm (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-07-03 08:32 am (UTC)Re: Friendships
Date: 2014-06-30 12:49 pm (UTC)