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

Religion and sitting like bookends

[antfan.livejournal.com]

A couple of things I really don't get - why is Nicola suddenly a full blown agnostic/atheist wanting to give up church going, and how would Patrick - who hasn't spoken to her seriously in yonks - know this? She doesn't say anything about thinking religion is all rubbish in End of Term, where they have their big Wade Abbas religion conversation. Is Forest actually confusing her with Rowan, who does say in EofT that she doesn't believe?

(And when Patrick says he's almost had it with the church - do we reckon he means he's flirting with agnosticism too or is it just the Roman Catholic Church he's fed up with?)

And did anyone, ever, by choice, sit as bookends? So uncomfortable and unnatural! Feel that signifies a lot about Ginty and Patrick's relationship in itself.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[scarletlobster.livejournal.com]

The sitting-like-bookends sounds consciously ornamental by both of them. They are very Rupert-and-Rosina; it is position designed to look picturesque and to avoid any possible eye contact, which might make the conversation more real.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think Patrick has anywhere to go if he loses faith in the Roman Catholic church. I don't see how he can evade his own argument that if the Church can be wrong now, then it's no more than a human institution and may have been wrong in the past. If he can't trust the church then he has no reliable authority for a belief in Christianity and the whole thing falls. He could perhaps be a deist, but not any other sort of Christian.
I know it has some purpose in plot terms , but all Patrick's whinging about the Church does get a touch tedious.
Mrs Kent

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

How odd ... I always found Patrick's caring enough about religion/faith/Church/God to think/fret/worry/talk about it with sincerity one of the unusual distinguishing features of Forest's writing.

It is a meta-pleasure (for me) that we all enjoy the books in such different ways. Discovering here the different opinions about Patrick or Ginty (not to mention Giles) has given me a whole new perspective on these well loved and often read books.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agree. I always found it quite bonkers that any teenage boy would care at all about what happened in the Church (and I'm speaking as a brought-up-Catholic teenager) but I loved that religion was being discussed in the books. What other childrens' or teenagers' books mentioned it at all? Much older, classic books assume everyone is Christian and lay on a Christian message in a fairly heavy-handed way. But I can't think of another author who allows the characters to discuss religion, including the viewpoints of the sceptical but intelligently curious, the brought-up-faithful-but-wavering, and the unfashionably committed.
I wonder if Patrick's obsession with the traditional forms of the Mass is precisely because he is losing his faith.

Re: Religion

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Patrick's obsession with the traditional forms of the Mass is precisely because he is losing his faith.

Tell me more ... I was as taken aback as Nicola when he speaks of his faith (Faith?) wavering when I first read it!

Re: Religion

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

This nearly could have been one of those long comments which you mentioned on another thread, where you write at length and then never post because it's not really about the book at all. Anyway I think I have now edited down to just being about Patrick's faith!
Any child brought up in a religion will eventually start to question what they are being expected to believe. And they have to pick out what they actually think themselves from the web of family custom / habit / belief / tradition in which they have been brought up since before they could even walk and talk. (A certain R Dawkins might say been brainwashed into believing.) There are extra implications for Patrick - if he were to abandon belief and not be a Catholic he would be letting down all the generations of Catholic Merricks before him, and all those heroic martyrs.
While he is having doubts, the Church goes through all these changes. This suggests to Patrick that the Church is not a divinely instituted authority, just a human institution. This means that all his heroic ancestors might have been wrong in what they believed, and everything they had to suffer was just a waste.
Slight deviation here but bear with me. The Armed Forces drill their young cadets in the commands, rules and drills of obedience, so that when in battle, unable to think due to terror and shock, the externally imposed rules will override the brain's natural survival instinct to run like hell. Similarly the Church needs rituals, routines and commands, so that when the doubter starts to think 'hang on a minute, this is all rubbish' the full force of tradition kicks in and keeps the doubter going through the motions. Patrick is already wavering, and the Church changing its rules and traditions doesn't give him anything to cling onto.
But Patrick doesn't want to let go of his faith, because that would mean letting go of his sense of being a Merrick, part of a long tradition of noble belief in the face of opposition. So he has to hang onto the wreckage of the Church's traditions because they are the only thing that makes sense of the whole thing for him.
There is another point to be made, about language. If Patrick is having doubts he might prefer to have the Mass rushed through in an inaudible Latin mutter - that way he doesn't actually have to think about what is being said; he can lose himself in the 'bells and smells' aspect. But the Mass said clearly, in English means he has to actually pay some attention to the words and their meaning. And if he is having doubts, then he is already questioning that meaning.
Finally, I think his obsession with the trad forms of the Mass is a form of distraction - the more he goes on about it, the less he has to examine the shaky foundations of his own belief.

Re: Religion

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

This comment got lost in the mix until today, for me, and it seems to me that it's spot on.

It would also (picking up a theme for a later discussion) explain some of Ann's disapproval of the Latin mass; it's not just that it's a barrier to ecumenism, as she says, but that it allows a lot of people to do the easy wallow-in-the-ritual-and-ignore-the-words thing.

Re: Religion

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen this, but I really like it as an exploration of reconciling the two elements. I shall have to re-read the Patrick-and-religion bits with it in mind.

Re: Religion

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Thank you, jackmerlin - that all makes a lot of sense. Am I right in thinking he would have understood the Latin?

As I read your second paragraph, I thought, oh of course, that's why I didn't get it: I was brought up by a mother who was (and is) an atheist (and particularly anti-Catholic after being prevented from writing with her left hand at convent primary school because, "only the Devil's children would do that"). I was baptised and confirmed at 18 (into Evangelical Anglicanism and am now a Quaker) so the whole bit about questioning the faith your are brought up in just bypassed me. (Though it has been pointed out to me that my Church attendance was simply a mirror-image of the children of the devout rebelling and leaving the Church.)

RE: Re: Religion

[liadnan]

Yes, I'd agree with all of that.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Well, not since Charlotte Yonge, anyway.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I'm with you on that; the interesting and different perspectives on religion were very much part of the charm for me, and I read The Attic Term and The Cricket Term as they came out, when I was about the same age as Nicola and that sort of teenage wrestling with faith, and wondering if you were just in it for the ritual and the music and so forth rang very true. And it just wasn't something that happened in other books.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have. I thought it was very nice. I think it depends a bit on the relative heights of the people involved whether it is comfortable.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

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

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

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

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[anglaisepaon.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[anglaisepaon.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[(Anonymous)]

"... 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".

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[antfan.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[schwarmerei1.livejournal.com]

The only (Watsonian) explanation I can see is that Nicola's skepticism has been discussed in the family and relayed to Patrick by Ginty.

I think the chance that Ginty brought Nicola up as a topic of conversation to Patrick is very slight indeed!

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

For that matter the likelihood of the family discussing Nicola's sceptism seriously seems slight too! If they were in the habit of religious conversations over the dinner table then I think Lawrie's ignorance might not have been so complete and nor would the others be so surprised about Ann's distress over "See the tender lamb appears, promised from eternal years."

antfan's Doylist reasoning makes most sense for me.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Unless maybe Ginty thought Nicola's heathenishness would damn her in his eyes?

To Sprog63 - yes, I'd have the Marlows down as the kind of Anglicans who go to church and otherwise never discuss religion - which again is why Nicola deciding to make a "thing" of it is a bit odd.

Re: Religion and sitting like bookends

[schwarmerei1.livejournal.com]

P: Can we meet tomorrow after your lot are done with services?
G: Yes super! I'll hack over on Catkin.
P: I wish yours wasn't so late in the morning...I guess a sleep-in is part of the CofE appeal.
G: You'd think it was at 5am hearing Nick complain about how pointless it is!