Cricket Term, chapters 10-12

[coughingbear]

The final section of the book - the Play, the Match, and the End. Just about in time, but my apologies that it's so late; long day at work and trouble with laptop.

Chapter Ten: The Play

Everyone disperses from the Hall, and Nicola once again conceals her feelings sufficiently to congratulate Lawrie, explain what's going on, and show her prize to Rose and Chas. Latimer is 'quizzically scolding' with Kay, who then starts chatting happily to Latimer's don. Who had remembered Karen apparently with pleasure at the prize-giving, so presumably not as someone who was unable to cope with the work at Oxford? And Chas invents a saying 'Lawrie is Lucky, but Nicola is Nicer'. True?

Then Miranda comes to ask Nicola to have dinner with her father. As bridgetblood noted on the last discussion post 'True to form, Mrs West prioritises a rescheduled committee meeting over coming to see Miranda in the play. Do you think Miranda minds, or is she not bothered or even prefers to have her father there on his own? And what does Mr West think about it?' (At the time, Miranda seems more concerned that Nicola tell her the secret.) Ann apparently does mind a bit that she's missing the family picnic (what happens if Prizegiving is a wet day, I wonder? Picnics in the Assembly Hall?) - but still lends Nicola her boater to look smart in 'Wade Abbas's best hotel', eating lemon soup, grilled trout, and coffee mousse - suiting Nicola, who has not lost her love of trying new things from the beginning of Autumn Term. And champagne, because after all she does have a prize to celebrate. And the mourning ornament that Mr West tries to give her, neatly flowing the scene back to school and the Play.

Which Forest does not describe, jumping straight to afterwards and the audience's impressed reactions. Not just Nicola; Rowan agrees it 'really did have something', talking to Jan. Who makes a wholly characteristic unobtrusive exit. Nicola asks about her parents, and Rowan points out that the absence of a mother might not be 'clean and tidy' - another moment of learning.

Chas enjoyed the Play, with the 'pirates', and Rose didn't, finding it frightening, and feeling sorry for Caliban. "'There just are people like that and you can't like them-' Like Marie Dobson." What do people think of this as where Nicola's thoughts on Marie end up?

Finally, Mrs Marlow gets a chance to talk to Nicola, and tell her about Miss Keith's characteristic letter, and that she'd consulted Rowan and Karen about what to say about leaving Kingscote. And on her way back to school, encountering Miss Cromwell, finally a chance to unburden her conscience about the missed lesson. Cromwell and Miss Keith have tried, it turns out, to speak to Meg Hopkins's father - 'from time to time' implies to me that they've been doing it for a few years. But no information on who would have got the Prosser if Lawrie hadn't; and suddenly Nicola doesn't care any more.

Which at least means that she isn't joining miserable Lawrie and Ginty. Ginty exceptionally put out because she has been missing out on all the positive attention she thinks should have been hers, and Lawrie because of Caliban. And her prize being a facsimile First Folio, so Nicola suddenly makes the connection with Mask of Apollo and Crommie's conversation, and 'Richard Burbadge'. So when Lawrie offers swops 'for the separate kind and your share of The Idiot' she says yes, 'giving up without regret something she no longer much wanted'. I love the bits about Marlow family swopping rules (though I do wonder what Nicola would have done when she realised how much 'the separate kind' would cost); once agreed you can't take it back. And Lawrie bursts into tears over Caliban and accidentally reveals her bargain with Them to Nicola and they all go quarrelsomely to bed.

Chapter Eleven - The Cricket Final

But before the final, the Diving Cup, and Nicola refusing this time to hold Ginty's locket. Leaving her feeling guilty when Ginty, 'patently nervous and off form', comes seventh. Superstition again; having picked Terry Hunt and Monica to win, Nicola worries that she had better take her evil eye elsewhere so as not to make Lois lose. I do feel sorry for Ginty when her friends can't leave her alone about not winning the Cup, and can quite see why she invents something to put them off the scent, though still feel that suggesting she tried to give it up to Monica is fairly awful. 'It might have been better if she'd cried.'

I love the moment with Lower IV.A and Janice not wishing each other luck, and the heroic chorus. Meanwhile Lois attempts to set up her usual alibi with a pulled muscle, and Val has yet another weep over leaving school. I am always a bit suprised at the notion of Val on demos; it doesn't fit my preconceptions of her at all, but perhaps that's just not wanting especially to share a banner with her.

Nicola choosing the team, and Lawrie being reassuring about putting them in as openers. And the 'never explain, never apologise' quote - which I think we've discussed before, and which the internet says has been attributed to many people, including Disraeli and Jowett.

And finally the match starts, and Lois is bowling to Nicola, hard and straight. 'Giles's bowling must have been even more so, but at least there had been nothing personal behind it.' But Gina French starts to let the byes pile up, and Janice is no worse than Nicola, and the runs begin to come. Nicola makes a very respectable 39, and then Pomona and Berenice manage to stick at the end, and cause Lois and Janice endless trouble getting them out - as commentators often say, bowling out tail-enders is a special skill. Lois isn't prepared to admit this or stop trying to get a last wicket, and in the end Janice lures Berenice out. Two hours to score 106 runs; no indication of over-rate.

After tea, Lois and Jan in to bat, and Nicola bowling, gets Jan caught & bowled; lucky, but lucky because she has trained herself and her team to go after everything possible. And a second wicket at the end of the over - but after that Lois starts to score, and at 40 for 2 Nicola brings Esther on. Nothing can happen, and suddenly it does; Cathy out, Gillian Hendry, Gina French. 'It was Lawrie's catch, it was stupendous, it was fantastic' and Esther has a hat-trick. I love the way Forest gets the rhythms of cricket, and the way that excitement can come out of nowhere like this. And the line 'petrified by success, Esther's remaining balls could have been safely hit by an energetic seven-year-old.'

As the rabbits come out to the crease Lois is extremely clear that she wants to do all the batting. And is closing in on the target when Val Longstreet comes in and finds herself facing the bowling by mistake. What do people think about Nicola feeling she can't 'sling down some fast ones or dolly Val out as she'd dollied Gin'? Lawrie takes the next over, and Nicola runs to save the boundary, gets the ball and turns to throw, and Lois has come back for the third but Val hasn't. 'Mr Tallboy, thought Nicola, almost an invocation, as her arm went back. The ball bounced and took the leg bail: and Val was scuttling desperately still.'
I love this moment for so many reasons, including of course the obvious Defeat of Lois, but also the way it invokes, not merely Murder Must Advertise, but Rowan and Nicola's conversation at the beginning of the book, and Rowan's advice that Nicola has followed to success, including most especially the fielding practice, without which this could not happen. An invocation is just right.

And Lois sits in the Sixth sitting room and plays again and again the moment when she tried to get Val to run, 'and after that, the three runs still hers for the making-'. I think one of the obvious contrasts here is Nicola's ability to accept that she didn't get the Prosser. Interesting that she never turns up for Old Girls events in the future. What did happen to Lois Sanger?

Chapter Twelve - Breaking-Up

The last day of term, and Nicola can savour the Cricket Cup and not having to leave Kingscote. 'The long hour of Mark Reading' does sound pretty miserable, but does include being awarded the Cricket Cup and resisting the urge 'to turn and hold it high'. Set-up for Attic Term with the news that equable Miss Carter will be going away for a year and be replaced by Mrs Lambert. And Edwin's letter - Nicola not wanting to read it in case it's news that Nicholas is dead, but instead 'N writes that he is married to Bess Burby', ie Burbage. (Reading this now, I am finally thinking 'Ark Royal AND Burbage' - but, perhaps because they are at each end of the book, it's never bothered me before. And somehow it works that each twin has a connection to Nicholas.)

Nicola runs to find out, and Janice tells her who Burbage was. But first offers her assessment of the Prosser decision - that Lawrie was 'a useful gimmick' to help other parents accept it going to the same family twice running. And - bearing out Miranda's comment that Jan notices Nicola more than other people - they talk about what Jan will be doing and the possibility of becoming a solicitor. And Nicola almost tells her about Nicholas, only Miranda arrives to ask for Jan's address. And despite the ironic look, Jan gives it.

The last encounter with Lois. 'In some odd way, we do rather seem to have got across one another...' It's interesting to speculate what has brought Lois to saying this - hardly an apology or even an admission of guilt, but at least an admission that things should have played out differently. (Could they? What if Lois had told the truth to the Court of Honour?)

It's hard to imagine what Kingscote will be like next term without Jan or Lois or indeed Marie Dobson.

Comments

What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

She dies.

"They could not conceive how much it mattered.
'Oh come on, Lois! It's only a game! Not a matter of life and death.'
But they were wrong."

She goes home, and dies. I generally presume she kills herself, since dying of a broken heart is rare, but she dies: Forest says so.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[coughingbear]

I did think about that this evening but I don't know - for one thing it seems wrong structurally after Marie's death, and for another, surely that's the kind of news that would make it back to school and therefore Old Girls?

But it would make sense of her making a not-quite-apology to Nicola.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I agree, it is wrong structurally - but isn't playing with conventional structure a recurrent theme in these books? I wonder if that is why it has to be so oblique: having written Marie's death so powerfully, there was nowhere else to go with Lois'.

The conversation in the VIth form sitting-room is so typically Forest in its ear for dialogue and ability to conjure an emotional tone: the others are nostalgic and feeling warm towards each other, Lois is isolated, obsessively brooding, and melancholic. They try and bring her in, but unsuccessfully. I have a fantasy that, "But they were wrong" is one of those sentences which "wrote itself" as some writers describe, but once it was there, where it flows so naturally from the conversation, Forest couldn't not include it. No author would want to leave out Marie's death: it is so compelling, so the only possibility in literary terms is to slip Lois' death in as she does, and bother convention which says you can't have two deaths of unpleasant characters in one term. (Or drug-running pigeons, or amazing connections between the ancient ancestors and the disparate interests of both twins, or write children's books in made up dialects, or ...)

On the Watsonian side: I am not sure it would necessarily make it back to school: especially if it was suicide - families can be ashamed of that. There is no indication that I recall that Lois' parents attend anything at school (like Janice's) so they have no personal relationship with Miss Keith and staff, perhaps they just didn't say? As long as she was not in the same area as another Kingscote girl (who might have read it in the local press) how would anyone get to know? Lois is unlikely to have had friends to stay in the holidays, so her parent/s wouldn't know any of the girls to tell them individually.

And that makes it the perfect counterpoint (is that the word I want?) to Lawrie's comment, "We wouldn't have remembered anything about her if nobody had said." They did remember Lois at Old Girl's events, but only just.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

but lucky because she has trained herself and her team to go after everything possible.

I adore the cricket final. I love that Lower IVA's luck is earned, I love that the Sixth is finally done in by Lois's character flaws, and I especially love Nicola being Nicola and totally unable to cope with the emotions of winning.

Would people have seen Nicola bowling Val as unsporting? Nicola sees it that way, and expects that everyone else would. But she's still fourteen to Val's... let's assume eighteen, so I doubt the spectators would have seen it in the same terms as Upper VB slaying the Seconds.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

*all the thumbs up*

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I always assume Val on demos is meant to be sarcastic - they're cheering her up by imagining an unlikely future. Although perhaps her smug's service stripe was for a genuine cause that she's likely to carry on.

Belatedly, and apologies if this was previously discussed, my internet is too poor to go back and check, why can't Nicola have Lower IVa in the cup AND be on the Prospects list? Surely if she gets them further on she's even more worthy of extra coaching herself?

[coughingbear]

I think on the Cup vs being a Prospect it's just a matter of time - if Nicola is still busy coaching her form she's not really available for extra coaching.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I love that the result of the cricket match essentially comes down to character and leadership. Esther is looking nervous so Nicola gives her an encouraging smile and Esther bowls a hat-trick. Meanwhile Lois snarls at her team-mate causing her to do a 'work-to-rule', costing them a few runs, and then panics Val into doing the wrong thing. If Nicola had been captaining the Sixth, they would have won ! (although I expect Lois would have had no scruples about bowling out Val.)

Lawrie is Lucky but Nicola is Nicer.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

If you had just seven words to precis all ten Marlow books, you couldn't do better than Chas's saying.
It's one of my favourite bits of all the books.

Jan's parents / Prospero.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

It's only struck me on this readthrough that Jan plays the MAIN part in her school play and no-one comes to see her! (I suppose it's struck me more this time than it ever did as a child because I am now used to attending plays where one of my offspring is being a sheep or a frog.)
Presumably the mother is dead or disappeared, and the father lives a long way away - and that's a hell of a journey - but even so? I wonder if Janice didn't tell her father much about the play in letters home because either she knew he wouldn't be able to come and see her, or because she didn't want him to come and see her. I suppose I'm just wondering about her home life and her relationship with her father, and also her attitude to acting.
She was reluctant to be Prospero at the start, but is clearly very good at acting him. Having just been reading Vilette I can't help comparing her to Lucy Snowe who is pushed into acting a part in a play, surprises herself with the passion and ability she has in the part but is determined never to act again.

Val

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

That was my thought, too: an attempt to cheer Val up by the sheer incongruity. Also, I got the impression here that the Sixth genuinely like Val; she's a bit earnest and a wee bit pompous and not up to getting social cues much (I think her alertness to "typical lower form cheek" is because she can't tell the difference between friendly teasing and actual defiance, so steps on them all), but she genuinely tries to do the right thing according to her lights (see, for example, her stepping up to the plate to call cheers for the Lower IV when Lois fails to do so). And, of course, she finally roused herself to tick Lois off for being "so obsessive about winning." Which I suspect made the more socially acute types exhale and go, "Well, if even Val's noticed..."

Which ties in with two other things, actually; first, I think that explains Nicola's sympathy in the match and it sort of links her to Ann, as someone who's appreciated more by her peers (the other Guides, in Ann's case, and Authority) than by those to whom she's in a different role.

Re: Val

[coughingbear]

I think you're both right about the teasing, though the follow-up line to Jan about remaining uncommitted does suggest to me that they think there are things Val might get involved in and even march for. I agree that the rest of the Sixth seem to like her and I like her at the moment when she calls for Lower iV.A at the match.

Re: Val

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I could actually see her being quite activist about things like contraception and choice, perhaps.

Re: Lawrie is Lucky but Nicola is Nicer.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Yes; it's a splendid motto for the series.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I don't think it is unsporting in the context, but it makes a nice contrast with her ruthlessness towards Ginty.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

ankaret, as ever, provides, marvellously plausibly (http://archiveofourown.org/works/28564). (Best if you have read Miss Pym Disposes, but quite readable without.)

Re: Jan's parents / Prospero.

[coughingbear]

And her unobtrusive exit, not hanging around to receive endless congratulations.

We know she has at least one brother, and can quite happily contemplate working with her uncle, but I think that's all we get on her family apart from Rowan's comments.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Maybe she doesn't die straight away? Maybe she goes to her PE teacher training college, maybe even gets a job. But every time something goes wrong in her life she goes back to brooding obsessively about 'that game'. No-one picks up that the brooding is a symptom of a mental disorder until one day she takes an overdose.....
I'm very impressed by your textual reading by the way. It had never before occurred to me that she actually dies, but you're right, it does say so!

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's how I read it also--that, while she doesn't go straight home from Kingscote and commit suicide, she may well end up doing so later on in life, as an extension of the way she thinks here. (I'm inclined to feel that "But they were wrong" is Forest quoting Lois' inner monologue, rather than a literal reference to life and death, but mileage varies.)

Re: Val

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree with you that the Sixth like Val--and she actually does seem likable in this scene. She also seems willing to do her best in the cricket matches, even though she's unathletic and unconfident, and they may appreciate that side of her as well. As you say, someone who can be a pain, but is also responsible and dependable.
Now you all have made me very curious about what demos Val might actually march in (and what demos the Kingscote Sixth would have been aware of at this amorphous stage of After the War, and what sides they would have taken...).

Re: Val on demos

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I really like this characterisation of Val: the link with Ann is something I'd not seen before and just rings true for me. Val, like Cathy, is a character who suddenly becomes more real in these chapters. But for me, it doesn't preclude her carrying a banner.

If Val is well described as "a bit earnest and a wee bit pompous" (and I think it is a lovely description of her), then that seems a perfectly natural pairing with going on demos. Some on any demo will be passionate and furious and/or deeply knowledgeable about the issue; others simply along for the ride: but equally on many demos there is a solid phalanx of the earnest and mildly pompous. Val will be in good company. The 1972 Aldermaston March was not a particularly riotous affair apparently, and that would have been a reference point for them (book published in '74).

There is the going against authority bit, but this is presumably enhanced by being Head Girl: free of that, I reckon Val may well go on an organised march for a good cause "according to her lights". I think they are just trying to make her look forwards not back.

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I have to say, I've always read "But they were wrong" as simply Bill Shankly's famous aphorism translated into a girls' school context, rather than as a literal statement either of fact or intent.

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

I am always tickled by Miss Cromwell's phrasing to Nicola: something like "Miss Keith saw fit to tell me..." which suggests, to me, that Miss Cromwell feels the information flow between headmistress and staff is not all it might be.
Tangent to follow, fair warning: I am very fond of Miss Cromwell as a character--I think she'd have reduced me to indignant tears when I was Lower Fourth age, but I would have loved her as an older teenager. And I like the way she seems to enjoy Miranda's cheeky remarks rather than squashing them. (On Miranda's part, this reminds me of Miss Pym's take on Beau Nash, as someone whose well-to-do family background moves to speak to her form mistress as an equal.) I had a professor in grad school who was even fiercer, or at any rate more explosive, than Miss Cromwell, but who loved it on the rare occasions when someone got up the nerve to talk back (assuming that the backtalk was accompanied by proper preparation)... .

Wouldn't somebody like to write a fic showing Cricket Term from the point of view of the staff? Miss Cromwell, Miss Kempe, even Miss Craven or Miss Latimer... I think it would be absolutely fascinating.

Re: Val on demos

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Ah! I've just pictured Val meeting up with a charmingly earnest young philosophy PhD from King's on a CND march ("Our opponents paint us as anti-science! But this is a perversion of scientific ideals!" - not the snappiest of chants, but heart-felt) and being blissfully happy envelope-stuffing by his side forever more....

Re: What did happen to Lois Sanger?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I always read that as metaphorical - that it really does feel like life and death to Lois, not that she will actually die of it. But the fact that it feels like that matters, and also ties into Nicola's invoking not simply brilliant act of fielding, but a murderer, to deliver the death-blow.