trennels | Readthrough: Run Away Home, Chapters 12-16 (Reply)

Posting slightly early on behalf of

legionseagle, to whom thanks.

This is the last post on the modern Marlows books, so I'd like to take the opportunity to express gratitude to everyone who's contributed, but particularly those who've put time and energy into writing guest posts, and our indefatigable mods. It's not quite all over yet: after a short break we'll be reading the Players books (schedule to follow) and if there's appetite, The Thursday Kidnapping. Thank you!

LB

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Someone suggested in one of the earlier chapter discussions that possibly this is the part of the book Forest wanted to write, and she cut and bent her story to make it fit. It would not surprise me; I think there's a difference in tone and atmosphere in these chapters which possibly suggest they were written at a different time or with a different fluency. Discussion?

My personal opinion is that these chapters bear comparison with and have the degree of authenticity Ransome reaches in We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea (although if Commander Walker had been sending his famous telegram about the Marlow boys, I suspect it would have been two words long.)

Nit-picks out of the way first.

Surfrider goes to "Wotton" which is a wooded, generally quiet location on the Isle of Wight, distinguished by having a car ferry that runs at night. That seems to make it "Wooton Creek" when doing geography according to the maps, since this is indeed a ferry place some four miles east of Cowes having all the above characteristics. (While Forest plays about with mainland geography to suit her purposes, the remainder of Isle of Wight and Solent landmarks are accurately described and in the right place if Wotton=Wooton Creek.).

I cannot see how they can have made it in the time. As discussed in comments last time, "Bacca Cave" from Rowan's reference to "Old Harry Rocks" (also a real place: a prominent headline west of Poole) seems to be somewhere on that stretch of coastline, going west towards Swanage. This distance table may help. It gives the Poole/Cowes distance as 28 nautical miles (a nautical mile is 2000 yards for practical purposes and "a knot" is one nautical mile an hour). Add on four miles at the end, Cowes to "Wotton" and four miles at the start to account for the added distance to "Bacca Cove" and you are looking at a minimum distance of 36 nautical miles. They have less than five hours (they leave Bacca Cove at somewhat after seven and get in at ten to twelve) which means Surfrider has to average 7.5 knots over the ground to get there in time, and the plan depends on her doing so.

Unfortunately, given Surfrider's size, type, and the fact she's engineless, I cannot see that even with the tide with them all the way, they could make any such assumption (indeed, the later journey timings reflect a much more plausible average speed of about four knots) and bringing it off is a near miracle.

My second issue is hypothermia. It's an open boat and it's January and they only (on the outward journey) have two sleeping bags between three of them. Mind you, given one of the early signs of hypothermia is bad decision making, maybe there is something in it, at that.

Anyone wanting to raise suggestions and comments as to these points (and, indeed, try to identify the point at which Edward puts on the mysteriously appearing lifejacket and oilies), please do.

Anyway, as we saw in the last chapter, Nicola duly delivers the fugitive and Surfrider sets off eastwards up Channel to Wotton.

We are told nothing about the outward journey to Wotton, handily achieved by the pov character being asleep throughout. When they arrive, there is another rather startling moment when Giles, on edge, interrogates Edward about whether his friends "really exist". Part of the theme of deception and picking up from Patrick's earlier (and much less reasonable) scepticism about whether Monica exists, or an indication that Giles' nerves are at snapping point?

Arrival of the car ferry. Peter tells Edward he's "a great sis" for being afraid of the car ferry, and, given he's the one who starts the UFO red herring, I think it's somewhat cheek on his part. A large car ferry, arriving after midnight in a small anchorage is a genuinely scary beast even if you have seen one before.

In an echo of the fate of the Golden Enterprise, the boat which is coming to pick Edward up turns out to have been smashed by drunken hooligans on a rampage in another boat. (Actually, the House of Lords decision of Dorset Yacht v. Home Office was decided in 1970 and concerned a not-dissimilar scenario, with a group of Borstal boys – shades of the Thuggery – attempting to escape from Brownsea island in a stolen yacht and damaging others in Poole Harbour in the proceeds. Presumably it made a big impact on the Hampshire/Dorset boating community, including Forest's cousins Dick and Gay who seem to have been her boat experts.) I quite like the glimpse of the Continental end of the conspiracy.

Edward pleads for Giles and Peter to take him all the way in Surfrider and Giles uses the phrase "this boat would never make it." Edward starts to cry himself to sleep in one of the sleeping bags, Giles gives qualified permission to Peter to take the boat out at first light (with the object, subject to weather, of making to Poole or Weymouth, cross-channel ferry ports, to give Edward a chance of stowing away.) Peters tells his brother he's a C.O.B., and then gives a suitably bowdlerised translation. Somewhat implausible, both as to meaning and that Giles needs it?

The callousness of Peter's thought, that if Edward has smothered himself in his sleeping bag it will solve a lot of problems (Really, Peter?) finds an echo in later chapters with Lawrie's reaction to Judith. It also, I think, underscores how much of the whole rescue plot has really been for internal, egotistical reasons on the part of most of the conspirators, and not for Edward's benefit at all. Thoughts?

The remainder of this chapter and the next is a classic example of the cascade theory of maritime (and other) disasters in action, and could do with being taught as part of the RYA syllabus as such. That is, each small error (eg setting off with only two sleeping bags and insufficiently provisioned even for an 80 mile round trip) culminates in a disastrous outcome.

Apart from observing that Peter is a treacherous little swine, who behaves unforgivably (and I will expand on that view in comments) I cannot improve upon the great John Finnemore, in the sitcom Cabin Pressure (Ipswich) describing the mindset that leads Peter first to take Surfrider out into the Channel against Giles' express instructions and Giles then to accept the position:

DR. DUNCAN: Now then, I want to talk to you today about the potentially dangerous mind sets a pilot can get themselves into; and in particular what are known as the Six Deadly I’s. These are … MARTIN (instantly): Impatience, Impulsivity, Invulnerability, Insecurity, Indecision, and I-Know-Best.

Play "Spot the Deadly I" for the rest of the chapter.

That said, the outward journey is relatively uneventful; not particularly strong winds, Peter enjoying tweaking the sails and dreaming of boasting to Selby about going foreign (Invulnerability). Usual Marlow obliviousness, in Peter's bafflement that "they" could be considered people traffickers and illegal immigrants? Also, I don't have a clue where on the French coast they're supposed to be, except that it does seem to be well east of the Contentin peninsula. A sly joke at the expense of Secret Army? Also, thank goodness Giles produced a more responsible plan than "throw him out in France and make him hitch" original plot.

Nice foregrounding of disaster at the end of the chapter, with "all our lives" a hark back to The Thuggery Affair and its use of "tomorrow."

I've always thought that about Charlie Chaplin films, too, though it's interesting that Lawrie has kept her affection for the Little Tramp from TMATT.

The use of the Shipping Forecast (ominously, the wind is veering and increasing, suggesting a cold front coming through) and the chilly room works very well to build tension, with Rowan spelling out to a Nicola who isn't, I think, so much obtuse as refusing to believe exactly what the risks are until forced to (and neither Rowan nor Nicola believe the boys could possibly be idiot enough to have gone the whole way in Surfrider.)

External tension also ratchets up with the "Mother back on Tuesday" deadline, which is a definite echo of WDMTGTS.

The boys are at sea, the weather is worsening and they are running very short of food (to say nothing of being cold, wet and exhausted). And they may have up to 36 hours more of it in prospect. Why, incidentally, didn't Giles either buy a bit more or a bit more practical food (eg tinned pilchards)? He knew what the distance was back and how many he had to feed during it.

Nicola and Patrick's visit to Portsmouth; discussed somewhat prematurely last time. I like the idea of his rating various headmasters by their schtick even though Broomhill sounds like the sort of establishment wild horses wouldn't get me anywhere near and I'm surprised Patrick takes a different view. Thoughts? Perhaps it does demonstrate how utterly miserable he was at the last place.

In an echo of what other people have said about Lawrie being turned into a bit of a caricature to suit the plot, it is slightly unfair of Peter on the knowledge he ought to have of her that he claims she's not the taking secrets to the grave type, even though she promptly proves him correct in this instance with her breath-takingly callous (as well as indiscreet) reaction to the news of Judith's overdose. Thoughts about this, generally?

Ann's reaction I believe is wholly understandable. The sheer level of her family's betrayal of her, together with the unresolved question of Giles and Peter's fate (which the boat's not being in Wotton Creek makes even starker) is enough to make anyone go dizzy. Feel free to go wild in comments; in my view this is a case where despite the whole narrative being against her she said it would end in tears, and it has. The story gives her grudging justice, but it is justice without liking or sympathy, in my view; almost as if Forest is writing despite herself.

The emotional heart of the book, for me, particularly with the parallel between Peter on the sea and Patrick in the chapel, lighting candles. Both of them are reduced to going through the motions in a semi-conscious state, and both of them are unsure whether they can possibly have done enough to make it count. Having said that: Peter! Shaking out the reefs at that point really is the act of an idiot (Impatience) – and completely explained by everything that has gone before. It's the final act in a chain of circumstances which wind up to inevitable disaster.

Anyone with medical knowledge want to comment on Giles' concussion? It seems to be a compromise between the traditional adventure story injury, in which people are laid out for hours and come to themselves with little more than a headache, and a much more real and much more scary phenomenon. But is his subsequent recovery, however partial, convincing?

In a sense, I think things come full circle here, back to TMATT and Talisman. She, too, went down leaving only a fragment of recognisable name-board, leaving the person who found it in an agony about what had happened to the crew. Another Lord Peter reverse echo, too, with the body which is really, in this incarnation, sea-wrack. And Peter, who came in on "the boat thing" goes out on another.

It's an echoey, shivery end, with the sun come out and the wind dying down and Rowan in "her version" of being in floods and the boys asleep in the cave.

An uneven book, but not a bad note to end on, in my view. Have at it!