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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How odd! I read "prance around being regrettably matey" entirely in terms of Patrick's condescension ("How dare they presume to be matey to a Merrick? Are the shades of Mariot Chase to be so polluted?") but now you mention it he most definitely is attributing camp behaviour to them, isn't he?

How far, of course, a 15 year old considering the behavioural tics of disliked schoolteachers as campy effeminancy (to which he responds with a snarky comment) and how far that translates into paedophiliac "grooming" is a matter of interpretation. He might just be being homophobic as well as snobbish. We never see his schoolteachers from anyone else's perspective, after all.

Now you see I have always rather disliked Ginty, in this book in particular, and totally sympathise with Mrs Marlow here!

My mother always took us to the dentist (since we lived a fair way out of town, she had to be a chauffeur as public transport, while better than it is now, was not that great), but did not accompany us into the ~~torture chamber~~ treatment room.

But isn't it partly that Patrick is a Young Fogey, and partly that his father is very against the changes, and therefore he feels he ought to be, too? I've always assumed that it was a family thing, rather than just his own personal views. There's that scene we'll be coming to soon where his father asks if he really does mind about the changes, or if he is just trying to please him. Patrick says he does - but I wonder....

I think part of the reason Ann gets a hammering is that she's a crypto-mother figure. Taking care of the little ones. She's sidelined in Run Away Home because she identifies with Judith - 'Imagine if it was your own baby'.

I imagine Ginty and Nicola will have a cool and uneasy relationship for a long time - probably till long after they've both married someone else entirely.
But Patrick is right back in with Nicola as they used to be, without any acknowledgement or apology on his part, unless you count the embarrassed staring at Regina. In some ways I respect Nicola for not being petty-minded or whingey about it. Just think how Lawrie would behave in the same situation. But in other ways, I want to give Patrick a massive clip round the ear on Nicola's behalf.

I don't think I read it as either, just that Patrick - and, arguably, many of his contemporaries at school - disliked the "matiness" and preferred the staff to keep their distance.

Actually, using first names doesn't necessarily mean being matey - my daughter's primary school used first names for the staff (one woman having been overheard, to my daughter's glee, to bollock an unfortunate with: "You may call me Mrs X, or you may call me Jemima, but you will NOT call me MISS!"), but there was no more or less matiness than there normally is in a primary school.

I think he does dislike it and as I mentioned in my comment he's right to do so; preferring the staff to keep their distance and not enforce friendly (first name) terms in an unequal relationship seems wholly sensible and admirable. It's like my mother's detestation of doctors and nurses calling her by her first name, when she often had half a century on them (I was most touched that at the inquest the Coroner asked what she would have preferred, and when I told her she then went on to call her "Mrs [legioneagle]")

But that doesn't get away from the language Patrick uses to convey his perfectly understandable distaste. "Prance around" suggest campiness and "answer to" suggest that it's he who is doing the calling, and both of those language choices suggest something about Patrick.

Thank you! I was aiming for "shortened name" or "nickname" (the full name being Frances, of course, now and for all my conscious life rendered "Fran" or "Frankie" as a shortening, and I have to say it's a favourite name of mine) and obviously o'ershot and fell on the other.

I had always understood it was Miranda's family (presumably her Zionist mother) who hadn't wanted her to have a part in the Christmas Play - Val Longstreet may have jumped to the conclusion that it would be impossible, but we don't actually hear the staff side of things. The Levy child, whose first name escapes me and I'm eating my supper so can't stop to look it up, isn't even allowed to go and watch, which Miranda is.

I rather think this is a case of like mother, like daughter. Mrs Marlow is hardly the picture of daughterly submission to parental authority when it comes to love. I don't get the impression that Mrs Marlow has forgiven Mme Orly either.

They'd be Gillick competent, wouldn't they? (not adult but mature enough to understand and consent to treatment). Pre Gillick but then a few fillings wouldn't have been controversial.

We do get some staff views in the scene when it's discussed whether Miranda can be an angel, and it's clear that it's Christian objections to having her in the play that are being considered, as well as whether her parents might object. And later in this book Miranda says that Miss Keith wasn't very happy about it.

ETA: it's Kempe and Cromwell, and although Kempe says she doesn't object, 'but obviously some people would take great exception. And from the other side - what sort of trouble should we be letting ourselves in for from her parents?'

Edited 2015-02-18 21:42 (UTC)

I think it's interesting that Ginty's perspective is exactly that of the reader, too, at this stage. We have no knowledge of Patrick's school life, and how he participates in it or otherwise. This is news to readers, too, and of course, this is the book where that changes, given subsequent chapters entirely from Patrick's POV in London, something we haven't had before. Both Ginty-at-school and Patrick-at-school have not been of interest to the Ginty-at-home and Patrick-at-home during the course of their relationship. And as you say, this attempt to explore and unite their home and school versions in a re-envisioning of themselves neatly foreshadows the impending doom of the relationship between those dimly imagined selves, dependent on the fragile and illicit telephone connection.

I feel for her- I once signed out a Latin dictionary previously in the possession of a middle distance runner at the Commonwealth Games (her father was even more famous, having had Olympian stature) who was a school legend.

Someone needs to write Alice Prosser fic.

I don't think the use of the word "prance" necessarily implies campiness or hints at sexuality. Forest uses the word elsewhere, including in reference to Patrick himself.

And my reading of Patrick's choice of the name "Fanny" is more as a juvenile sort of joke ("Imagine having to call your teachers by their first names, and imagine if they had names like Fanny, giggle giggle"). My schoolmates and I used to titter about a teacher named Mr. Bates, and it was considered the height of hilarity to accidentally-on-purpose call him Master Bates. I see Patrick's comment as rather similar.

I don't necessarily think it has to be read that way, but I do find the positioning of the words in the conversation very interesting.

Even if it's not necessarily what Forest herself meant to convey, the language Patrick and Nicola are using here can definitely be read on several levels. And as legionseagle has said, those language choices say something about Patrick.

A confrontation between an elderly and suitably acerbic Alice Prosser and Miss Keith, perchance?

Also, Peter along with Nick does one hell of a lot of babysitting (mostly safely) in RMF. Not a regular household chore, but one can easily imagine if the Dodds hadn't instantly bonded with the two of them Pam and Ann would have been saddled with entertaining three recently traumatised children.

Athena! (Mathematics was under her purview.)

Not personally being aware of all of the content of "Fanny Hill", are we sure it would be to the Merrick Boy's taste?
*shows cheek worthy of Bunty Penfold*

It's incredibly interesting to contemplate all the ways that can be interpreted though! I'll admit it hadn't occurred to me previously...

Trust me, most tastes are catered for (she spies on Goings On in a molly house from a keyhole; she's not sure she approves, but the reader's given the full benefit just in case they need more evidence to form their view.)

I can actually recommend it; it's much better value that various slash Pride and Prejudices people have tried to shove at me.

It was -- to use the vernacular espoused by the young men in navy and khaki who frequent my drawing-room these days -- a bloody shame.

They never use those words to me .But I hear them, nonetheless.

Was I ever a widow, truly? When I looked down at that -- that thing -- raving on the hospital bed did I think husband? No, I rather think I didn't. I 'd lost him, long ago. Never back, never again.

I'd married -- that was my bargain (straight from the schoolroom -- no-one mentioned them at the time --: it comes in the Bible, and in Shakespeare some half wit told me later) and then --

A succession of little sloughed-off half-formed babes, eyeless, untimely ripp'd -- oh, yes, ripp'd. Miscarrying, be it early or late, rips things away. Rips womb, life, heart. Hip rip away. I was a great sport, at school, I always called first -- you shouldn't, as a victor, but I'd grown so used to losing I called, always, even after we started to win.

All times, all seasons.

They won't get a penny of it. Not his family, not mine.

If I'd been poor, to start with --

No. Let the millstone become a lifeline.

I never could climb ropes, no matter what the games captain yelled.

But I can weave them, weave them out of gold.

And when I lie in this pit I'll watch those others climbing towards the sun.

Edited 2015-02-19 07:32 (UTC)

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Page 19 of 21

Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

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

Re: The dentist.

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: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Comments on Wendy Treadgold's anti-semitism

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

Re: The dentist.

Re: Comments on Wendy Treadgold's anti-semitism

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: A Marlow Privilege to Wear Navy

Fic! I say,heah! Fic!

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Fic! I say,heah! Fic!

Re: Treating Nicola shabbily

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Re: Patrick's views of teachers

Came out a bit dark