trennels | Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Entry tags:

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!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm inclined to think that since Alice Prosser wanted other girls to have the opportunity she didn't, and the scholarships included career training/university, that she wouldn't have wanted clothes to be the stopping point for those awarded the scholarship, and that it did include uniforms, musical instruments etc. as required. But there's nothing in the text to say either way.

You're right about Nicola; she likes the family history inherent in those passed-on possessions, and that probably outweighs family liking/disliking. And she has fun with the boater (young Churchill/adsum) and it doesn't seem that it being Ann's is off-putting.

Hmm, yes. Distinct possibility there. (There's also a bit in David Lodge's How Far Can You Go? about one, adult, character being given the nod (actually a pat on the backside) by a monk to whom he is confiding his troubles. Interesting to think about that book in context of this.

I'm now wondering what first names the Kingscote teachers would have - I can't remember if they're revealed in the books at all. I'd love Miss Keith to have a wildly improbable name like Thalia. Or would that be too much, what with Pomona already?

Miss Keith is Edith, and Miss Kempe is Eve, but I can't remember any others off the top of my head.

It's an interesting bookend with Selby's qualms about Foley, in MATT, I think. Forest is very alert to the creepiness of adults misusing power around children. I wonder whose joke 'Fanny' is: Forest's, or Patrick's? I can't quite see him making a sexual innuendo to Nicola, somehow: does he ever say anything of the sort elsewhere? I see him being quite prudish about 'mixed company'--he might say it to Peter, or to a schoolfriend, but not to the girls.

I love the thought of Miss Keith being a Thalia. I've always felt Tim was a lot more like her aunty than she'd want to admit. Both so anxious to have things their own way, both quietly disliking anyone who might pose a challenge to their leadership.

To borrow Forest's italics, what on earth could Crommie's first name have been?

Of course! Although maybe Eve could be short for Evangelina?

Tim would dislike to hear that she was like her aunt so very, very much. Tim's also unfair to Nicola, in preference to Lawrie, another thing she has in common with Me Auntie.

Marguerite? Gwendolen? (I'd like to reclaim Gwendonlen as a name.) Or if we want Dickens/Rowling-style nominative determinism, then possibly Hypatia.

I can't remember him saying anything of the sort elsewhere (and now desperate to reread all of them right now).

I do see Patrick as being a bit prudish about saying something to Nicola. On the other hand, I could also see Patrick having a joke without realising that Nicola understood the subtext precisely because he would not anticipate one of the Marlow girls might understand the language he was using.

Annoyingly, Autumn Term is one of the few that I don't have with me over here, but the passage where Rowan and Co. are talking about Tim's terrifying potential always makes me think that some people recognised the similarities.

I will be incredibly sad if it ever comes out that her name was not Hypatia.

I'd never thought about it from the point of view of Ginty's muscular strength. Interesting.

I think the bookends position, as well as being a kind of intimacy, says something about their equality. The position requires one to support another, which shows a kind of innate equality. I may be reading too much into this, but this comes across later when both botch up their relationship in equal measures.

That's an excellent point about the equality in their relationship and I like the idea that it mirrors the way they both manage to mess it up, bolting into the arms of others when it all falls apart.

Yes, I don't think Ginty's on teams in the way that Marie Dobson is in End of Term, and all that holiday riding has also probably kept her in trim. I used to share a house with someone who told me that she had her first orgasm in her mid-teens while horse-riding, so I can't necessarily read a lack of physicality in Ginty and Patrick's relationship from a depiction of them sitting back-to-back, even if they haven't spent the night together in a haystack.

"... why is Nicola suddenly a full blown agnostic/atheist wanting to give up church going?"

But why shouldn't she be? She's never seemed to believe in God before (at least that's the way it seems from EoT, which is the only time we really see her thinking and talking about That Kind Of Thing before now). The fact that she's curious about Catholicism seems to be part of her interest in history rather than any real feeling of religion, which she mentally files as "stuff Ann does".

Peter is an utter shyster when it comes to household chores, but it's a bit unfair to class "dancing with his sisters" under the same heading!

Ginty's being dismissed in this thread for not spending time with her family, family who mostly don't seem to want to spend time with her, unlike Patrick who does, as well as avoiding household chores. Peter's resolution to not dance with his sisters means that Ann ends up as a wallflower, when she might well have enjoyed a dance. It might be typical of a teenage boy, but it's also entirely self-centred. So no, it is not unfair to Peter to condemn him for avoiding his family in pursuit of his own pleasure/needs, as well as his laziness in not taking on his share of the allotted household tasks.

I always liked/got along with the Miss Cromwell types -- although they were not so much "ferocious" as "bitchy." Still, one generally knew where one was with them.

Yes, The Daughter of Time was my first Tey novel and now I've read them all to bits and regularly wish she'd written dozens more -- although I suppose if she had, there would inevitably have been some drop-off in quality à la Agatha Christie....

Alan Grant is another of my long-lived literary crushes.

Hee! No, it definitely doesn't have to veer into a tumble in the hay for them to share a physical relationship.

While we're speculating anyway, I'm curious about Ginty's response to Patrick saying he isn't involved in things...any thing. In some ways, it shows how much their relationship has been bound in being involved with this representation of each other - this tumult of emotion - rather than really knowing who the person is. It's possibly the most devastating foreshadowing she could have added.

Olivia?

The obvious explanation is that Patrick had been carrying out a single-handed reading of the Mariot Chase copy of Fanny Hill so the name was at the front of his mind, and it only struck him (to his considerable sheet-kicking horror) that "Fanny" was not being used by Mr Cleland simply as a frequently used female surname, abbreviation for Frances, see the works of J. Austen etc, but as a slang for her stock in trade when one of the boys at school happened to use the other meaning some days later (obviously he'd heard it before, but - only connect.)

We had Tacitus as well as Virgil at 'A' level; 'O' I think was strictly Caesar and Virgil (12th book so at least some action).

Forename, surely, not surname? (I only mention it because just think how awful it would be to be a teacher named Miss Fanny.)

But there are people like that. It doesn't have to be devastating, necessarily. I remember my daughter, at a London day school very similar to, although not, the one Forest attended, commenting that there were people who simply went to school, did their lessons and came home again without getting involved in any other activities, which she, who likes joining in, found very strange.

Merrick P.A.M's one-handed reading of the moistest novel in the English canon calls most plaintively and piteously for fic. And for brain bleach, but I'm one pre-birthday whiskey mac up, and partially anaesthetised.

To be fair, the write with your right hand was also imposed on my father (born 1921) by a Council elementary school; though I don't recall the Devil being dragged into it, I gather using the "wrong" hand involved a ruler across the back of the child's knuckles.

As a lifelong, cardholding member of the introvert and non-joiners union, I completely agree with that.

My point was about Ginty's response to this discovery - her surprise, followed by an attempt to fit Patrick into some kind of group activity, showed how little she actually understood him. They were been so absorbed in the emotion of being around each other and the various personas they created that they didn't actually know who the other person was. Hence the inevitable downfall.

Oh yes - they were playing with being in love, but it was Rupert and Rosina who were in love. Patrick and Ginty were merely sexually attracted to each other, and neither knew at all how to handle it!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 18 of 21

Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Re: A Marlow Privilege to Wear Navy

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

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

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: O-level Latin

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Religion

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends