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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That's both beautiful and terrible (in the sense of how it makes me feel, I mean, not terrible-as-in-bad). It makes me feel bad that Karen chucked in Oxford and Lawrie gets one just for being silly about Ariel.
I hope one day some great scientist who's just discovered a new planet / non-resistant anti-biotics / a new type of renewable energy looks back and thanks the Prosser scholarship which made it all possible.

The ten minute landrover trip always sounded a bit doubtful to me. Even at only 20mph it's still around 3 miles and it does sound very direct.

I wonder if Lawrie might mention it in her Oscar acceptance speech?

Of course, there's Fernanda Knowles being mentioned on the Third from time to time, and perhaps Jan might do something special.

But I agree with you; it would be a gorgeous moment if someone said, for example,

"Standing here in Stockholm before you all I am both proud and humbled. Proud because this is the highest honour a scientist can receive; humbled because I feel the comparison with so many greater than I, both those recognised by the Nobel Committee and those who never have and never will be. Truly, Isaac Newton observed, "I appear tall because I am standing on the shoulders of giants." Before I go on to mention the outstanding contribution made to today's award by my research team, without whom I would not merely not be standing here before you today, I doubt I would be standing at all, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to one of those giants. Alice Prosser was not a giant in stature, so far as I have ever been able to ascertain; the surviving photographs show a slight woman, made slighter still by a certain evasiveness before the camera's gaze. She was, I believe, a woman defined in life by self-effacingness; she would, I rather think, be sidling unobtrusively for the exits could she be present in this hall today. But, nonetheless, she was a giant in spirit, with a vision that saw how, if one only chose the right place to stand, with the leverage of her backing one could move mountains..."

Edited 2015-02-19 08:38 (UTC)

That's a splendid combination of bitterness, pride and anger in Alice's voice.

I also thought that the conversation with Esther and Nicola contains a similar foreshadowing of the collapse of that relationship. Nicola finds Esther's devotion to Daks scary and that she doesn't really know what holiday-Esther is like also parallels the Patrick/Ginty conversation, where Ginty revealing that she does love Patrick as herself scares Patrick with its intensity and their lack of knowledge of each other when they're not in proximity to one another. And beauty is part of Esther's appeal for Nicola as looks play a part in Patrick/Ginty's attraction to one another.

Absolutely. I'm struck by the order of your parallel. Because that would suggest that both Patrick and Nicola are frightened by emotional intensity while simultaneously being drawn to it (which makes me immediately think of her interest in Miranda/Jan). It's also intriguing as, from what I can tell in this post, quite a few people don't like Ginty or Patrick...what a neat bit of inversion to see her in relation to Esther's general inoffensiveness.

Poor Esther. I feel bad now for using inoffensive to describe her. Forest never really gave any of the quiet ones her own time to speak, did she?

That is splendid and strong and dark.

I love the detail of her calling first, and being a Nicola-like coach to and influence on her team. (and it comes in the Bible, and in Shakespeare, oof.)

I can't see Lawrie thanking anyone in an Oscar speech. (This will make her popular with the audience though!)

He's almost certainly have a Latin-English missal - standard First Communion present, which would give him certain complete sentences, but not much grammar - and ecclesiastical Latin isn't the same as classical

Blue Coat in Sonning? In the 50s, boys went there daily by train from Slough and Maidenhead and Oxfrd, but I don't know about London

I suggested somewhere, for Patrick, a school at Sonning. Fairly sure that i named it wrongly - think it was Presentation College - day boys travelled from Slough, Maidenhead, Oxford by train in the 1950s, then, I think , bus. So possibly from London too. It's now in Reading - has changed hands several times

Edited 2015-02-19 20:32 (UTC)

Being fair about her prejudices has never been my mother's strong point! However, reading your comment I realise I have just taken her presumption that it was a Catholic-thing rather than an education-thing as fact. Her learning to write was during WW2, so a touch later than you describe. I wonder when the educationalists started to shift this belief in the necessity of righthanded handwiting? And why it existed in the first place?

This is just a guess, though I may have heard something, but if all the children are sitting in one long row, fairly close together, if someone in the middle is writing with their left hand they would interfere with their neighbour on their left. Plus a general thing that everyone had to be the same -no individual writing styles allowed, they all had to use the same script. And the whole left handed thing has ancient origins- left and sinister have the same meaning.

That all makes wonderful sense - and I'd forgotten left and sinister, thank you. So what, some time I guess between the 1940s and 1960s brought about the change? Do you think there was a particular challenge, or a gradual shift?

Oh well, Forest gets so much right, we (or at least I) forgive these little problems!

Made me smile. Not sure I totally agree, but made me smile!

I don't think it is the school doing the expelling's duty to find another place in state sector. (Not in 1990's/2000's anyway) but the Local Authority. A Head Teacher has to expel well over the average before there is a response. Expulsion is a matter for HT and Governors. Coming to Education after working in Health sector I thought the power of a HT excelled that of a Consultant: Governors generally being unlikely to undermine the HT they have appointed (at least for a few years). This, as a non-medic, surprised me as Consultants are generally viewed as fairly powerful by the rest of the NHS.

I think it varied tremendously by area. Seems to me I've heard of children made to write with their right hands in the 1960s or even later, but my left-handed mother (b. 1922) was left alone in the 1920s.

That's an interesting idea and piece of information to fit into my thinking, thank you. It implies make left-handers write with their right hand not being an educational policy so much as something individuals teachers felt important. Unless it was a fad in the 30s and 40s, I suppose?-

Individual teachers following their own convictions about what is important in spite of the National Curriculum is still the case for many of the "incidentals" of education - which (to my mind) is often what makes or break educational experiences rather than syllabi.

Still under the half century's influence of my mother's belief that this was a Catholic nun thing, I wonder if it was more prevalent in Catholic schools or prevalent for longer there, but this wouldn't be easy to extrapolate from anecdata (fascinating though the latter is).

A teacher at my primary made one of our class switch to right handed, in the early 1970s. But I remember our parents tutting at her and I think the policy was changed at that point.

A late comment on this - just to say Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones has a nice fictional example of somebody being discouraged from writing with their left hand - which is significant in terms of plot too.

Sorry I'm responding so very late to this.

I don't think agnosticism/atheism is out of character for Nicola, but I do think it rather out of character with previous books that she is prepared to make a "thing" of it to her mother, by suggesting she stop going to church. That kind of overt separating herself from the crowd seems unlike her.

What puzzles me more is how Patrick is aware of her feelings. Their conversation seems to presuppose that Nicola has spoken to him of her skepticism very overtly - but I've gone back and looked at their Wade Abbas conversation in End of Term, and there's nothing there that seems to fit with this - no suggestion that she has problems with churchgoing or even Christianity itself, actually. I think we know she's fairly skeptical in EoT from her internal monologues, but I'm not clear how Patrick is so aware of it, unless they have had subsequent conversations on religion - but when is that supposed to have happened, given that their friendship so soon hit the rocks?

The only (Watsonian) explanation I can see is that Nicola's skepticism has been discussed in the family and relayed to Patrick by Ginty. But I think it's more likely a Doylian explanation, that Forest was more interested in having her characters espouse certain religious views in this book, and was less worried about series consistency.

Much to my amusement, I've just spent the afternoon reading The Thursday Kidnapping (I bought one of the Badgers Book copies advertised, in anticipation of a re-read and because I'm a completist) and there actually is a Terrible Tweedy Type (actually, she's got an interesting backstory, especially that the Big House in Devonshire from which she sprang has got bigger in memory over the intervening four or five decades) called Miss Lambert who does say, "Down, sir! Down, sir!" to a somewhat excitable spaniel, so it's perfectly Forest and perfectly Landed Gentry in Forest as a usage.

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Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

Re: Came out a bit dark

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

Re: Came out a bit dark

Re: Came out a bit dark

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Came out a bit dark

Re: Came out a bit dark

Re: Came out a bit dark

Re: Ginty and blood-sports

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

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Re: Religion

Re: Religion

Re: Religion

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

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

Re: Religion

Re: Religion

Re: Religion

Re: Religion

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

Re: Patrick's views of teachers