trennels | The Marlows and the Traitor Readthrough: Chapters 11-13 (Reply)

I'd love to hear thoughts about Anquetil's argument with David Freer and David's solution to Robert's obstinacy. I like the way Forest sketches Robert's growing preoccupation with the children's safety at the cost of everything else, his turn from sensible caution towards rigid, unbending determination. Freer's revelation that Whittier was humouring his subordinate is also nicely handled, with Robert marginally relenting to agree they'll return at the turn of the tide. I enjoy Robert's icy, polite self-control in anger, and the not-exactly surprising revelation that it conceals a Foleyish murderousness and unpredictability. It just makes me want to read All The Fic about Foley and Anquetil's past...

The Thorpes continue to be Not Quite Our Sort: it's a nice insight into Robert's fixation on the case that he starts to see markers of social class (Mr Thorpe's accent, his vulgar heartiness, his penchant for gadgets) as a more sinister sort of otherness. (Robert has, if nothing else, absorbed some snobbery at grammar school and Oxford that the war didn't dislodge.) And an amusing, if I think less than entirely plausible touch, that Lawrie's comment about the Master Spy puts the notion into Anquetil's head.

Anquetil's also now pretty close to 'ends justify the means' thinking: 'The thing was to get it done. And if you broke a few rules doing it--well, if you pulled it off no-one cared, and if you didn't, nothing anyone could say would be worse than the failure itself.' (His Greek verbs, however, are quite adorable. Once an inky-fingered grammar-school oik...)

As well as all the other ironies, we might see Anquetil's encounter with Johnnie as variant on the motif of trespass, as an inverted, and more-or-less comic (though Anquetil is desperate enough to pull a weapon too) version of the Marlows with Foley in the basement of Mariners.

I like Peter's embarrassing himself slightly by having the high-minded notion of preventing the package falling into enemy hands at all costs--but he has thought this before, and indeed articulated it to Ginty--without so much embarrassment, which blunts the effect a bit.

The account of Nicola and Ginty's adventure from Peter's vertiginous perspective is really nice, I think; the novel is really quite classical, as I think people have pointed out in the discussion already, in its near-unities of time and place; here we get a great perspective shift.

Peter's decision on a hiding place beautifully touches both his fear of heights and Ginty's claustrophobia. I also find the chest full of old books (and Fabian's wrecking log) deliciously evocative. The logs in Peter's Room and subsequent books might resonate with these, even if it's just a trope of which Forest was fond, rather than a direct reference. Peter's game of 'tag' (anyone else ever called it 'he'? I know 'tag', 'tig', 'it', etc, but never a gendered pronoun!) with an unwary Foley also has an echo in that later book, doesn't it, when he and Nicola chase around the table.

Peter's reaction of semi-hysterical giggles to both his having overcome or forgotten his fear of heights under stress, and to not having planned his reply message is a nice psychological insight, I think. Self-forgetting of 'weaknesses' at moments of danger links Peter and Nicola; perhaps even Ginty forgets her timidity enough to throw the lamp at Foley.

Foley walking widdershins has a nice touch of supernatural threat about it; the miasma that seems to hang about his ancestor's log is similar. I was spooked by The Tower of London too! Peter's regard for the laws of property as regards the log is rather touching: 'if it hadn't belonged to someone else he would have dropped it over the rail to be pulped...'

Ginty, again, appears unimpressive in comparison to her younger siblings, but she does get her moment of glory in disabling Foley at the crucial moment. I love the little temporal overlap so that we see her attempted warning both from her own perspective and Nicola's. Her guilt at having injured him is a subtle touch: and picked up in her kindness in tying the sling for him in the next chapter.

The final lines of the chapter! Obvious, I suppose, but still effective.

I really enjoy Foley's dangerous mixture of vulnerability and threat here: the 'leopard with a raging toothache' metaphor is delightful.

I also like the play with time, the slowness of the last hour before six, Nicola's realisation that it was only two days ago that she was on the crow's nest at Mariners, the fog delaying everything.

Ginty's lack of appetite for a fight is of a piece perhaps with her squeamishness and tender-heartedness towards Foley. I can't really dislike her for it, though I'm also rather charmed by Nicola's 'relishing piratical look'.

Peter's seeing himself mirrored in Foley as the U-boat captain rebukes him for not having followed orders is a marvellously chilling moment, I think, as is Foley's 'amusement' at Peter's gunpoint confrontation with him, 'half-sitting on a rock' like a malign imp. And Foley's final words--you can't help, I think, but feel some reluctant admiration at the sprezzatura of 'souvenir of a crowded weekend' (a touch of camp, or am I imagining that?); though I think Forest makes clear that the coolth is only the flip side of an aristocratic disdain for the humanity of others.

I'd love to hear commentary on the scene of the U-Boat being depth-charged from anyone who has some knowledge of or interest in such matters: is it plausible?

I enjoy the fact that the children are basically still expendable: that they quite low down the list of priorities after taking prisoners, securing and investigating the lighthouse. (What happens to Fabian's journal?) The children babbling in shock; Ginty especially, is a nice detail.

Nicola's ability to tell Whittier what happened to Foley 'without any unnecessary and idiotic lump in her throat' is a interesting reversal of expectation, and her tact in remembering his friendship with Robert shows her a maturer person, perhaps, than she was at the beginning of this crowded weekend. Anquetil's inscrutable reaction to Foley's death? Any thoughts? I also really like Nicola's accurate prediction of her father's attitude to Lawrie's accident, and her child's-eye perception of a 'grandfather and grandmother of a row' between Anquetil and Whittier. And her stubborn insistence on the Fleet having missed the signal, which restores good humour. Something I really like about the whole series is its commentary on adult and institutional fallibility.

We might save most of our speculation for the long-term traumatic effects of this episode on the Marlows for later books, but any thoughts on how the events of this one resonate through the series? Rather unreasonably, given the genre and Forest's composition and conceptualisation of the novels, I'd always like there to be more reference back. Oh well, that's what fic is for! This splendid fic by

ankaret can serve some of our interim needs, but I do encourage people to post their ideas, prompts and links to stories. I'd love an AU where all this doesn't remain hushed up, and the Marlows find themselves unwitting celebrities. How is Foley's death explained? Peter's actually killed someone: how might that echo through his life? What happens to the Thorpes? Quite a lot of loose ends for a novel that is in other ways self-contained.

I enjoy Nicola and the destroyer captain's mutual appreciation; made bitter-sweet by the acknowledgement that she'd 'probably never again be able to be on the bridge of a naval destroyer while she was actually at sea': it's not a flash-forward exactly, but it is a headcanon of mine that Nicola eventually decides that she would rather not have the Navy at all than the bits of it available to her as a Wren. Ginty's bathetic greeting to their mother always rather makes me smile too, as does the end of the novel on the note of Lawrie's superb self-absorption.

Enough from me! Have at it.

Next week we'll be beginning Falconer's Lure, and I'll post a schedule for that in a couple of days (I'm away and don't have my copy to hand to carve up the chapters for each week's reading). I've been wondering if someone else in the comm might like to do a guest post for a few chapters of Falconer's? I'm happy to start things off next week, but if you'd like to take over for perhaps the week beginning July 25th or August 1st, do send me a PM.