Why is Patrick an Only Child?

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

Pam and Geoff Marlow are remarkably fecund; but Helena and Anthony Merrick only have one child. Anthony Merrick seems to be a fairly strict Catholic, so why is it that Patrick is their only child?

I wonder whether Helena Merrick, being a rather pragmatic Catholic (see Patrick's remark about fish on fridays in Attic Term, for example), was secretly using some form of contraception. Or perhaps they were playing Vatican Roulette and were just lucky...

I guess from AF's point of view, Patrick needs to be an only to contrast with the Marlows; and maybe he also represents her: she was also an only child.

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably because Patrick only became a Catholic retrospectively when AF needed one to comment on the play in End Of Term - after all, in Falconer's Lure he had a cousin who was a vicar!

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

However, considering the Merricks' social class, lots of siblings for Patrick would be more likely, Catholic or not.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Heir and a spare, you mean? Hmm, true. Maybe one or other parent had fertility problems and it was a glorious unlikeliness that they ended up with Patrick at all?

If there was a sibling or siblings who died, you'd think Patrick would have mentioned it.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

To quote Jilly Cooper: "birth control is flagrantly middle class". I think fertility - or possibly just not much of a sex life - would cover it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Evelyn Waugh, cited in Nancy Mitford Noblesse Oblige, I think, about bc as an mc indicator. Though quite likely also in J Cooper.

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the vicar, but now you mention it...

Though it's at half term she turns him into a Catholic, when Mrs Marlow needs somewhere for her mother to hear Mass

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

So it is! I'd forgotten Madame Orly, though I can't think how anyone could.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Patrick only became a Catholic retrospectively when AF needed one to comment on the play in End Of Term - after all, in Falconer's Lure he had a cousin who was a vicar!


Not all that astonishing? I know an Anglican Vicar whose brother is a Catholic priest, and a Catholic nun whose father is an Anglican bishop.
The owner of the computer I'm using is the Catholic daughter of an Anglican bishop and his father waa a Baptist minister. Then there are all those Anglican clergy in the Quaker chocolate families.