trennels | Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

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Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Thanks very much to

coughingbear for writing the posts on The Cricket Term. I'm back in the saddle for this one, but if anyone is interested in a post on later chapters of this novel, on Run Away Home or the Players novels, please let me know below or by pm. Discussion proceeds here about exactly what order we're going to do things in: if you have feelings please let us know in comments at that post. Suggestions for themed posts are here.

So, forward to The Attic Term!

We pick up the story again at the end of the summer holiday that is beginning at the close of Cricket Term, leaving a swathe of unnarrated summer into which to insert fic. This has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt. Ginty and Patrick's friendship has clearly developed, and they have privately continued their Gondal fantasy. I enjoy the detail that Ginty finds more opportunities for romance with Patrick's Hamlet in reading Horatio than she does in reading Ophelia, because it's so true! There are! Her continued nervousness around Regina is an ominous sign, though, and Patrick does seem as skittish as Catkin when things get a touch amorous. Ginty's disinclination to talk to Patrick about Monica and vice versa continues the series' theme of Home and School and never the twain.

We learn something of Patrick's school life, and its contrasts with Kingscote: it seems more academically pushy, with O-levels taken early, and with far less of a culture of compulsion around extra-curricular activities. There are hints of Patrick's dissatisfaction with reform in the Catholic Church and his school's enthusiastic embrace of that--Ginty presumably knows something of his views there, because she doesn't enquire why the 'trad' Christmas Play was hastily rejected, though we sense that perhaps Patrick doesn't discuss theology with Ginty very much. (Incidentally, I'm wondering what sort of details might make a Nativity Play seem too 'trad' in a post-Vatican II climate?) It is, in any case, a lot more satisfying to have him expound his beliefs to Nicola in the next chapter, because of the resonance with the ride from Wade Abbas in End of Term. The discussion of plays--whether Hamlet or Eugene O'Neill, furthers the theme of pretence. Patrick cannot act, but he can pretend to be someone--a nice and subtle distinction. This month's number of the Journal of Read It Somewhere Studies tells me that Forest's school put on Marco Millions, which must then have been a pretty new play, since it first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1928. Anyone ever seen it?

'Imagine asking. Suppose you got told,' says Ginty of Unity Logan's officious efforts on behalf of June White, demoted from Candle Angel in the Play in End of Term. Here Ginty asks, and very nearly gets told, but in the last sentence of the chapter decides that there are some things she'd better off not knowing. It's a wonderfully light-touch portrait of two young people who like the idea of being in a romance rather more, one senses, than they actually like each other. The moment at which Patrick shies from Ginty's 'tense, insistent' face and diverts the conversation to Claudie (oh, Patrick!) is brilliant. If he was conscious of what he was doing it would be cruel, but Forest switches point of view to show us he isn't, though I'm not sure that makes him any more likeable at that moment. What do others think of Ginty and Patrick's doomed friendship?

Nicola's awkward presence at cubbing uncomfortably reminds us of happier times she's spent with Patrick. Forest--rather cunningly--doesn't give us Patrick's viewpoint in this chapter, so we're left with the sisters as mutually resentful rivals. I'm also amused by her misunderstanding of the age and state of growth of their quarry, and her perking up when she realises they're not actually sending 'fubsy' cubs to their deaths. Is Ginty's 'resigned sisterly contempt' feigned? It's only just over a year ago in story-time that she was a fervent anti-bloodsports type, after all.

The breakfast-table conversation is notably malicious on Patrick and Ginty's part--I'm glad that Mr Merrick is there to stand up for Nicola. I rather wish that Patrick had got the telling-off he deserves for his bad behaviour at the hunt in Peter's Room, though. I like the oxymoron of '"Yup," said Nicola, automatically doom-laden, her spirits leaping up.' at the news of Ginty's being summoned away to packing.

Nicola's ease with Regina contrasts with Ginty's continued nerves, as the conversation which follows is surely intended as contrast: eccentric but revealing where Ginty's interactions with Patrick are bound by certain conventions and superficial.

'"Though I suppose she is quite used to strangers nowadays"' (ouch, Patrick!) is flagged by the authorial voice as significant; if it implies that Nicola is a stranger, it also suggests that Ginty is one too. Nicola's cheerful acceptance of the labour of sweeping out (the Merrick Boy displaying his extraordinary tact and charm again) eases the atmosphere between them, and their conversation becomes almost immediately quite profound, with Nicola's revelation of Edwin's researches into the farm log. Patrick's moment of reaffirmation in faith (and Nicola's initial misunderstanding of it) is quite touching, I think, the more so because it only makes emotional sense: his ancestor's courage on the scaffold doesn't render his beliefs (or Patrick's traddiness) any whit more true (as Nicola's later, private conviction that nothing is worth Tyburn acknowledges.)

Nicola and Patrick's shared dislike of being 'talked to' in ways they see as patronising by adults perhaps provides a further contrast with Ginty's horror of rows, and offers a distant fore-echo of Ginty and Nicola's later interviews with Miss Keith. I'm tickled and a bit appalled by Patrick's desire for 'masters to keep their distance and answer to Sir' (just like dogs in trouble, splendid bit of landed gentry arrogance from the Merrick Boy there). But he's clearly unhappy enough at school to want to leave before A-levels--I can't imagine that he struggles academically in the humanities, though I can quite believe his own estimate of his maths. Patrick's account of his school assemblies provides the irony that the trendier end of the Catholic Church is rather more low church (with extempore prayer and 'holy pop') than the Church of England solidities that Nicola is used to. In his reluctance to stand up and be counted we see Patrick's shyness emerging again, but perhaps also an ironic contrast with his illustrious ancestor. Later in the chapter, Patrick reflects sadly that there's no real danger involved in his modern sort of recusancy, only the sort of social embarrassment that a 'madly trad' assembly might bring. (I'd be inclined to regard this a very callow and silly sort of nostalgia were Patrick not the sort of bloke who brings an eighteenth-century throwing-knife to a showdown in a medieval dovecote, sees someone killed with it, hops into a stolen Rolls-Royce for a sexually-charged joyride with a teenage drug-smuggler who dies crashing it and then casually passes an ounce of uncut cocaine to his naval cadet friend as a souvenir of a crowded weekend. He's nothing if not a risk-taker.)

Mention of the Forty (Martyrs of England and Wales) places us presumably in summer 1971, since their canonization took place in October 1970. Anyone more up on matters theological than I care to comment on Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms? How well do they represent traditional Catholicism in general, and Forest's own in particular?

I simply adore Nicola's persistent analogies of the Catholic Church with the Navy, by the way, and her reflections on Ginty's showing off to Patrick by affecting interest in Dante and medieval Latin are delicious. I first read Dante in Sayers' translation, and retain a fondness for it despite its terza rima being pretty cumbrous. (It's the only translation I know that bothers with a linguistic difference between Dante and Sordello, for example, for which I'll forgive it a lot--Sayers' Sordello speaks (rather kailyard) Scots.) But I also rather like The Constant Nymph, whose themes of rivalry and jealousy are obviously relevant here (also the source for Edwin's surname?) Forest seems associatively to connect The Constant Nymph with Sayers through Hilary's admiration of it as a bestseller with artistic merit in The Nine Tailors.

How do people read Nicola's interest in going to Mass? It's picked up again in Run Away Home, and I'm sure there'll be more discussion there, but what do you think her motivations are?

Though really, I think Nicola deserves better than the Merrick Boy, it is delightful to see them happy and self-forgetfully, adolescently earnest together; and by the time Nicola's recalled to Trennels, she's a good deal happier.

The differing reactions of the family to Nicola's arrival are nicely observed, I think, from Rowan's amusement, through Ann's worried humourlessness ('remindingly' is a good adverb), to Lawrie's immediate relating of the situation to her own concerns (the detail that Lawrie has developed a genuine fondness for the Idiot Boy, though, is charming--even if--typically Lawrie, she only does so when he is actually hers.) And oh dear, Ginty's jealous fury. Her anger at her mother betrays her into positively Lawrie-ish fantastic hyperbole ('suddenly famous and interviewed on TV'). Nicola's 'bubble of happiness' breaking as she realises that the conversation doesn't necessarily mean a renewal of her friendship with Patrick is rather heartbreaking though. But at least she's lucky at the dentist. I rather like the subtle difference drawn between 'smug' and 'cat-with-creamy', too: though 'unusually perceptive' is backhanded: Forest can't quite let Ann have her due.

We begin with a glimpse of Mrs Lambert's officious inefficiency, which will later produce some disastrous results. Causation and responsibility are important themes here--the novel is in fact full of 'coughing bears'--which is in its turn, I suppose, Forest's meta-narratalogical commentary on story-telling, its conventions and structures.

Esther's affection for Daks? Affected, babyish or 'scarey' [sic]? Her response to her mother's pregnancy does rather suggest the last, doesn't it? An echo with Nicola's 'one would always much rather it were one of the family', too, perhaps. Flats where they don't allow babies (as opposed to flats unsuitable for)? I can imagine some restriction of the sort in 1930s service apartments, possibly, but it seems a bit peculiar in the 1970s. But maybe people know of similar rules from their own or others' experience?

Ann gets her step to prefect, and is observed in her element with the Junior Side infants. Nicola's expectation of saccharine gratitude for taking Ann's trunk tray down gets a rebuke that is both enjoyable in itself and for the equanimity with which Nicola receives it. I'm also delighted by Nicola's observation of the carpenter's filling in a gap with spare parquet. I always rather enjoy that sort of thing myself.

Miranda's continued devotion to Jan--aw! Complete with illogical wish for her to have failed but not failed her A-levels. Miranda's holiday in Venice (tempered by the realisation that it would be 'gaudy' to send Jan a gift or card alluding to it) contrasts with Jan's postcard ('written small', oh Miranda) from her Norfolk or Lincolnshire home. A Wool Cross works well for either--I like the detail that while Forest is inconsistent about which side of the Wash Jan's hometown is on she has a clear idea of what sort of country she hails from. In case anyone has missed it, here is fic, by

legionseagle, exploring Jan's past, and the slight mystery that seems to surround her mother.

Comments on Wendy Tredgold's anti-semitism? Interestingly, both Wendy's implied remark about Miranda's father, and her articulated one about Miranda not knowing about the existence of Oxfam shops are tacitly supported by Nicola. Forest is characteristic in leaving it to the reader to decide whether Wendy really is anti-Semitic or whether she simply resents Miranda's wealth and (it has to be admitted) slight tendency to snobbery: the comments of hers that we hear are insinuating, but only of Miranda's wealth and privilege, not her Jewishness. There's a similar entwining of issues of class and anti-Semitism in End of Term, with the 'common little soul with the perm and the Jaguar'. Miranda is embarrassed, however, by her remark about the 'dreggy uniform dress', which draws attention to the Marlows' relative poverty. It's a very effective and understated sketch of the ways in which wealth does, and does not, map onto social privilege and status.

We see Miranda's unpleasant side in her dealings with Sandra Grigson, who is harmless if rather prolix--Miranda's putdown is startlingly vicious--if again, as Nicola is forced to admit, accurate. Miranda appears as an edgy and unsettling presence here, I think, with Nicola finding herself in agreement both with Miranda and her antagonists. The moment when Nicola wonders if her hurt at Patrick's rejection of her shows in similar ways to Sandra's by Miranda is actually painful to read. I'm mildly surprised that no-one but Sandra recognises Sara Crewe--if Cousin Jon had sisters (and perhaps even if he didn't, though it's perhaps not one that boys would be as familiar with as girls might be), there must surely be a copy of A Little Princess in the Trennels playroom, and Rose would have no trouble identifying the reference. Perhaps this is the flexible timeline coming into play, but I read A Little Princess in the 1980s, and indeed played the rat in a stage version. Burnett's novel, with its reversals of fortune and status and its emphasis on the power of imagination and storytelling, resonate subtly and slightly uncomfortably with this scene and the previous chapters.

Miranda's family, like Patrick's, has an au pair (in fact, 'one of our idiot au pairs' suggests a multiplicity, or a sequence at least, thereof). I'm not really familiar with au pairing and how it worked in practice in the 1970s--but Miranda seems to regard Elsa as a kind of servant, which I thought was very much not the idea. Anyway, it seems unlikely that Miranda has the sort of frisson with Elsa that Patrick has with Claudie, more's the pity.

The Disaster! The coughing bear! I love, 'Nicola meditated briefly on the disastrousness of being not merely rich, but an only child and never having to wear your sisters' outgrown gear.' And Miranda is notably cavalier about the garment, reflecting that ruining it will be no hardship. This passage is growling with potential coughing bears--from Miranda's anger at Wendy's 'nudging voice' to Avril's fear that chickens may come home to her roost.

I think that's enough from me for now. Over to you!

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I'm also American--been lurking on this site for a couple of years now. I found AF when living in Northern Ireland, tho'--does that count? If I ever figure out how to set up an LJ account I will be
thedogsdinner

Meg Hopkins' family set-up reminds me strongly of the similar one with Wendy's father in Monica Dickens' The Fancy and in that case mother and daughter are in cowed, unspoken alliance both to protect each other from their unstable father's outbursts and to ensure the outside world doesn't know. I hope Meg and her mother get a similiarly happy outcome.

Yes, yes, indeed; exactly my thoughts (but better put): every time I read this chapter I go "Ha! Serves you right." (On Ginty getting the natural consequence of absenting herself from home re Patrick.)

I also think Mr Merrick is at his very best at breakfast and later running her her home.

If it takes "the landrover barely ten minutes to gulp the long, straight lane" that would be a fair hike on foot wouldn't it? "Gulping" to me implying speed, and "long, straight" lane implying that the road doesn't take a much more circuitous route than they can across fields/downs?

PS Do crows fly in straight lines?

(It's also notable that in this book, when she's shorn of both her chameleon-contexts -- Patrick and Monica -- she finds that she isn't really interested in doing much of anything at all! It's almost as if all her hobbies are really about other people....)

Now that, I'd never noticed ... but yes, yes again!

I think she has, but I'm inclined to be a bit more sympathetic, because Ginty hasn't withdrawn or switched her affections, where Patrick has. I think there's a fair bit of unexamined entitlement in Ginty's attitude: she feels that she's the natural object for Patrick's attention because they're closer in age, they shared enthusiasm for the Gondal and she's the Pretty One, and when her conscience troubles her about Nicola she quells it by thinking that a sort of Natural Order has been restored.

*Takes hat off and bows* - I never got that far! I do remember being surprised when I came across views seriously held that there was doubt in the matter: I took Tey and Alan Grant as unarguable.

This next para links also to a Cricket Term thread. My history teacher was a Miss Cromwell (don't mean that was her name, but her character). Fierce, unyielding: and at the start of my LIVth year, I was terrified of her. She was also utterly inspiring and required the highest standards, and spurred me on to improve, not simply my writing about history, but the useful academic skills (in those days) of being able to write legibly and check one's spelling in a dictionary if unsure. By the end of the year I was in the Miranda position of being the one she smiled at when I wasn't so cowed.

She was disdainful of my having read some Jean Plaidy and said if I liked reading history I should try The Daughter of Time. A bit disappointing at first, but then I got into it - and unwittingly she also introduced me to crime writing thereby!

Yes, and I think somewhere Miranda mentions that Mrs West is 'madly Zionist' so probably more likely she would disapprove.

Nicola rates boys higher than girls and almost certainly men higher than women and as Nicola is AF's main protagonist I see her (Nicola) reflecting AF's feelings in the matter. It would be a given that fathers are better/more amusing/more capable/more empathetic/more worthy generally of respect and admiration than mothers.

Pam Marlow gets off lightly!

Yes, I'm not of the view that people can "steal" the affections of another, so switching sisters is on Patrick IMO. However, Ginty is singularly lacking in Marlow public spirit. Perhaps that's why Mme Orly likes her?

Her mother was an Ulster Protestant living in Dublin? Thats -- unusual, given the direction of AF's later religious interests.

Incidentally, it occurred to me thinking over the second half of the Ampleanecdote that clearly 25% can't possibly have been a normal percentage of vocations (and even given the tendency to over-estimate the numbers of a visible minority, there clearly were one hell of a lot of dog collars in that bar) and my former colleague would have graduated in the mid '70s, so I wonder if there is any correlation between an unusually large percentage of boys discovering a vocation in the generation immediately after Vatican II?

The relative poverty element is relatively new to the family (post FL), isn't it?

The implication in what Nicola says is that there is at least one set of clothes belonging to each sister awaiting them.

When clothes came off rationing perhaps Pam bought (in a typical Pam spending spree) new school uniforms all round before the twins joined Kingscote (they were measured for their uniforms before the start of Autumn term). School uniforms take a while to change (ask any governing body) and so Kingscote's change comes a little later. This would mean there was at least one newish set of Navy uniform in 4 sizes awaiting the twins. (How many depends on how often since the war" Pam was able to do new school uniforms as required.) Mrs Marlow isn't the prudent sort, but we know she hordes her own clothes ('the Chest') so perhaps there is more than one set of outgrown school uniforms mothballed away? Otherwise wouldn't one twin have to wear scarlet? And why, if she is buying new uniform as required is she mothballing the rest away?

Ginty's take on having to wear Navy after the rest of the school have gone scarlet would be interesting too.

It is curious but I think the contrary is true - the high point was 59 and the post war to 1960 period is the boom time for ordinations generally and then they began to fall. There has been some research on this and I have the numbers somewhere (though they are much more difficult to put together and analyse than one might think - a priest who knew his way around historical stats spent a lot of time going through diocesan and order yearbooks)

Good question. I'm sure there are figures somewhere about vocations nationally, but if it's Ampleforth-specific it may well have been Hume's influence.

I've been wondering about where, other than school, Patrick has attended the new Mass. If the Merricks have been having Mass said in their chapel all along and just ignored all or some of the changes, I can see that the sort of school Mass Patrick then starts attending could be a real shock (English, facing the people, guitars and holy pop all at once, though possibly not liturgical dance).

Would Lawrie's Prosser cover school uniforms? I have no idea how scholarships to boarding school actually work, so don't know how likely this would be. (I do recall tales of kids winning places to grammar school but not being able to go because the uniform was simply not affordable.)

In which case, if Ann or Ginty are getting new uniforms, like Ann's new boater in Cricket Term or else wearing out the mothballed navy ones, then that means only one set of new (or mothballed scarlet from Ann/Ginty) uniforms for Nicola. And would Lawrie kick up a fuss about being in a different uniform to Nicola?

I wonder if Nicola has different feelings about inheriting Ginty's or Ann's uniforms vs Kay's or Rowan's?

I can see Ginty enjoying the Marlow privilege/Bonnie Prince Charlie exile of wearing navy, so long as wearing navy isn't treated as Miranda says it would be of Sandra, but that seems unlikely. (Although Miranda's saying that could also be treated with a pinch of salt.)

Here we are: Rev Gareth Leyshon's work on Catholic demographics here http://www.drgareth.info/demographics.shtml and a set concerned with ordinations in particular (to be used with caution given the source - it was a salvo in a heated debate on this very topic a few years ago) at http://www.lms.org.uk/resources/statistics-from-the-catholic-directory . I was incorrect about 1959 but I may have been thinking of entries into the seminary - on average it is six years from entry to ordination at the moment. The lms graph for ordinations per 100,000 is probably more significant than the absolute numbers.

All the "lower deck" Marlows skip out of doing chores when needful - Peter as a matter of course what with the washing up and refusing to dance with his sisters at parties, Nicola for her set work and in response to Ann's Bronte-isation of the Marlow family, and Lawrie for learning her parts. I don't see Ginty's behaviour as worse just because she's dealing with the intensity of teenage love, and, presumably, Patrick's demands on her time too - there's a lot of Patrick suggesting that either Nicola or Ginty, depending on the book, come over at x time to help him out, and to cater to his shyness, and not spend time at Trennels. I wonder how many invitations to lunch/supper were refused by Patrick, which could well contribute to Ginty's being around her family less?

That sense of Patrick making his demands on their time always strikes me with both Ginty and Nicola in this scene. It smacks of the same sense of entitlement that I then see in the way he treats Claudie and his mother later on. I've always read Mr Merrick's behaviour to Nicola at the breakfast table as a tacit apology for his son's lazy selfishness.

Yes, I'd agree with all of that.

The Prosser is described as pretty comprehensive, and Karen 'wasn't costing anyone anything' but it's not clear that this included clothes.

I think Nicola doesn't mind whose she inherits - the hat in Cricket Term that she thinks is super has 'been Kay's and Rowan's and Gin's' and the sheer weight of inheritance seems to be what pleases her. I'm sure she'd love to get Ann's boater!

Oh, really interesting, thank you! I wish the figures for Catholic baptisms against ONS general population figures went back before the war, because at a first glance they suggest a significant rise in the % from the mid-50s to early 60s, before falling back to what had been the rough 10% earlier. Which is a period when the birth rate is up anyway (post-war, earlier age of first marriage?), but perhaps up more for RCs? And ordinations seem to be going up from 1932, after bumping along around the same rate since 1912.

Would love to see some comparisons with non-CofE denominations & Scottish churches (and CofE, but the numbers are so affected there by being the state church that it's probably much harder to draw any useful conclusions).

The research is apparently not at all easy and one of those potential avenues for historical research where the sheer backbreaking tedious labour scares people off (?much like counting naval numbers?) - there were no central figures collated until relatively recently and even the annual directories on which this is based aren't absolutely accurate and aren't designed for the purpose, their primary purpose is as a record of addresses and nowadays phone numbers of the people you might need to contact. To do it properly you have to go back to each of the registers in each diocese (and monastery or order) and count, and cross-refer. There's been some research on earlier periods published by the Catholic Record Society but their stuff isn't on line (the journal is only going on line this year, it's just moved to OUP or CUP)

Edited 2015-02-18 11:57 (UTC)

Exactly like naval numbers - tedious but ultimately very rewarding! (Actually, numbers of various religious affiliations in the Navy is a whole interesting area of research in itself. And we do of course have the 1851 religious census as a point of comparison.)

Very much look forward to the CRS journal going online.

I actually wondered, on rereading this chapter, if Patrick was trying to tell Nicola that the new masters were grooming boys - or, at least in his mind, sexually threatening in their very difference from him.

'And most of them prance around being regrettably matey.'
'How gruesome!'
'So it is. I take it your women haven't got around yet to saying Do call me Fanny, won't you?'
'I can't even imagine it,' said Nicola, contemplating this impossibility with horrified fascination.

The use of 'prance' sounds exactly the kind of language I could imagine Patrick using in trying to communicate that the teachers in question were gay, and it's almost impossible to ignore the implied double meaning of the name 'Fanny' in his question to Nicola.

It's equally impossible (for me) not to be delighted by the ambiguity of Nicola's sudden 'fascination' with the possibility of this happening at Kingscote.

Yes, it's not just the "breach of hunting manners" that Mr Merrick's eyebrows are commenting on.

I've done bookend sitting too, and I agree, it was comfortable, although the relative heights, as you say, probably make a difference.

I also like the detail of their hands brushing against one another, repeatedly. They may not be gazing into one another's eyes, in a cliched form of intimacy, but there's intimacy in their physical back-to-back support and the movement of their hands.

It's also about Ginty's muscularity, too. Ginty might stay in that position because she hopes it's appealing to Patrick, but it takes her own strength to maintain it. Ginty's a swimmer, diver and hockey player, to team level, and I doubt she got there because she was totally flabby.

Yes, I really feel for Ginty here too. AF is absolutely spot on with the intensity of teenage feelings, and that absolute need for another five minutes, even when you know exactly how frustrating that would be. I adore that future fantasy moment too. It's captured beautifully and sparingly, as ever with AF.

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Page 17 of 21

Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: liked Patrick's father, but she wasn't all that keen on his mother

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily (P Merrick) and well (A Merrick)

Re: Being submissive to Patrick.

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

Re: liked Patrick's father, but she wasn't all that keen on his mother

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Forest interview

Re: A Marlow Privilege to Wear Navy

Re: Forest interview

Re: Forest interview

Re: A Marlow Privilege to Wear Navy

Re: Forest interview

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

RE: Re: Religion

Re: A Marlow Privilege to Wear Navy

Re: Forest interview

Re: Forest interview

Re: Forest interview

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: 'There's one thing I can never forgive my mother'