Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

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!

Comments

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

I do find myself wondering why the hell he isn't at Ampleforth, or Downside. If there were boarders there was Ealing but the most likely day-only candidate in London is the Oratory, which is and was staggeringly unlikely to have a trendy head.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[sue marsden (from livejournal.com)]

He was at day school in Falconer's Lure as a result of possibly still being not strong as a result of falling down the cliff, so even though he is now fully fit his parents probably thought it would be too unsettling to change schools again so near O levels.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

Yes - I remembered the health thing just after posting. And I suppose it's possible that as well as the risk to him of moving at the wrong time the big Catholic public schools might be reluctant to take late admissions.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

Though they don't live in London until they buy the Marlows' house - just had a look at FL and it's rather vague about whether he's only about to start going to a day school or has already gone back to one. If he's not there yet, slightly odd to say he 'absolutely loathes' it? Of course at that point the Merricks aren't Catholics in Forest's mind so doesn't have to be a Catholic school.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

hano's just pointed out that the senior school at Ampleforth starts around 13+, so in fact he would be about the right age in FL, and that for an English Catholic recusant gentry son they would almost certainly find a place at any age.

So it must be the health thing and his parents feeling he's not well enough to be sent away.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Or, of course, perhaps Anthony actually remembers how awful Downside was in his day.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

Yes - I can quite see Anthony Merrick not having a rose-tinted recollection of school.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

I like this too. And it can fit in fact with his later comment to Patrick that all schools except the best and the worst are much of a muchness - he has something very specific in mind for what the worst is like.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

But the day school can't have been in London because the Merricks didn't have anywhere to live there until Anthony was elected MP.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

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

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

Me too. hano and I have just been discussing this and agreeing that St Benedict's Ealing fits the bill most, though we might have to relocate it for Patrick to commute easily. The diocese did run some good schools and in some ways Cardinal Vaughan would fit (esp round the matey reforming teachers - all lay) but I do struggle a bit to see the Merricks sending their son there.

But really we think he would have gone to Ampleforth.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

Downside would be nearer home, but hano says it wasn't as good academically in the 1970s.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

That's my understanding too. (And then it seems to have tended to If-style anarchy in the 80s according to this obit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10983655/The-Very-Reverend-Dom-Philip-Jebb-obituary.html - I knew and rather hero-worshipped a boy a couple of years older than me in our parish who was there at the time but I never heard any of this - hano may well know more)

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

Apparently there was a bit of a history of protest at Downside - a couple of pupils who ended up as a monk and lay teacher at Worth once buried the rifles from the CCF armoury on the rugby pitch. This would have been in the late 60s.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

On a personal note, about a decade after Attic Term is set I started (actually I'd spent the previous seven years at the junior dept down the road) at precisely the type of school she is talking about - an Independent Day Grammar in Southampton run by the DeLammenais brothers - down the motorway in Portsmouth was one run by their main competitors in England in the tier below the Benedictine public schools and Stonyhurst, the DeLaSalle Brothers. But I don't think either order operated in London.
And yes, it was all very trendy and not exactly enthusing about the practice of religion. With the exception of the Welsh music teacher, who loathed ghastly modern hymns and all kinds of trendiness - and who was also very devout, happy to enter into debates about religion and theology with teenage boys, very kind, and with hindsight almost certainly gay. The only time I've been back to the place since I left was for his funeral.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

That does sound very like Patrick's school, so we will just have to presume for the purposes of Forest-world that the diocese isn't running so many good boys' schools and there was one in London. It's a shame he didn't have your music teacher, who sounds wonderful. It is a bit implausible that all the teachers are so reform-minded, but perhaps Patrick has just not spotted the ones who would be sympathetic to him.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[(Anonymous)]

There is no indication in the books that Patrick goes to an independent day grammar. Although the school in the books is not named , he probably goes to the Oratory, which is state. I can't see anything in the books that would indicate that, although the Merricks are a well off family, they wouldn't send their son to a well known Catholic state school if they thought it was the best choice.
Lizzzar

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Not Stoneyhurst? Or is that too suspect for being Jesuit?

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[coughingbear]

It's definitely a possibility but it doesn't feel quite right. Perhaps it is the Jesuit connection. Possibly (and this is pure anecdata) because the poshest male English Catholics I have met went to Ampleforth. I would think Ampleforth is top of the list of schools for a family like the Merricks, with Downside as a fallback if they really wanted him nearer home.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

A simultaneous yeah but no from us there...

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I used to go sailing with a pair of brothers who'd been at Ampleforth. What I distinctly recall was another friend, the brother-in-law of one of the two, mentioning to one of them that he'd seen Ampleforth was going mixed (in the Sixth form only, I think at that point) and the old Ampleforthian commenting, "I expect the boys will still go on buggering each other, for practice, all the same."

My old firm also had a partner who'd been at Ampleforth (he came from a family who'd lost Liverpool on the turn of a single card, back in 15- or 16 - something) and one evening my assistant and I were in Sam's Chop House, having a well-earned post-work drink, when we suddenly noticed a high concentration of dog-collars in the vicinity. "Oh," we said to each other, "must be a clerical conference in town." A few moments later we spotted the partner coming in, looking faintly shifty. We waved at him; he came over and by way of conversation one of us said, "Lot of vicars in here, aren't there?" At which point he admitted he was here for an Old Ampleforthians get-together, and that, yes, about 1 in 4 of his Sixth form class had indeed gone into the Church.

From which two anecdotes, I draw the conclusion that whichever one it was, there was something about Ampleforth which led Anthony to conclude that sending Patrick there would probably not be in the best interests of securing the succession to Mariot Chase....

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

Stoneyhust is plausible (and there's also the marginally less posh Benedictine schools, Douai, Worth, etc). But I have a hunch that if the Merricks were going to send Patrick to one of them they probably would go Benedictine rather than Jebbie - as you say, a bit suspect. Goes back to those ancient fault lines in English catholicism as well as the Jesuits being at the fore of the progressive tendency. Ampleforth and Downside were *for* people like the Merricks. Stoneyhursts original purpose was a bit broader.
I learnt recently the Dominicans ran a school for a bit (as they do in other places) but gave up.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[(Anonymous)]

I think I always vaguely thought, based on location, that the most likely candidate was the Oratory, but I honestly don't know how likely it was too be trendy. As a state school, it certainly could have some politically correct, right on masters, I suppose, but maybe I'm wrong and it was still pretty conservative. But could any mainstream Roman Catholic school, certainly in the state system, allow the Latin mass and ignoring most of Vatican II? I thought that was really Patrick's point when he doesn't seem to mind whether a school is state or private, particularly academic or not, but he doesn't want a RC school. Also, if "hothouse" means Westminster , St. Paul's, KCS, Dulwich or UCS none of these schools are Catholic, so it can't be particularly based on them. I think it may be essentially a fictional school.
lizzzar

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[liadnan]

I always forget the London Oratory is actually state (formerly voluntary aided now an academy I see) - I confuse it with its Berkshire sister, which isn't. I'm not too clear on the structure but my understanding is it's controlled by the Oratory Fathers and only indirectly answers to the Diocesan Education Service. If that's right I suspect it would have stayed pretty conservative throughout, as they did. The Oratory itself (admittedly a different physical site) certainly had regular old rite masses by the early 90s and I think took advantage of the indult to retain them from the start, as well as modern rite Latin with all conceivable bells and whistles at the main services.

Re: Peculiar O Level Timing

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I knew London Oratory was state because it struck me as peculiarly Tony Blairite hypocrisy to send his sons there; on the one hand the cred points for not sending them to public school, on the other more exclusive than anything other than a Leading School in the private sector.