Patrick's future

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

I've started re-reading Falconer's Lure and came across the following snippet:

~*~*~

Patrick said suddenly, "Oh dear. I do wish it was six years from now."

"Six years?" said Nicola, who sometimes wished it was this time next week, but had never looked that far ahead.

"Yes. Well. In six years, I'll have finished school, I'll have done National Service, and if Dad's still M.P. I can come back here and look after things. And then Jon and I can keep hawkes properly.

pg 52/53 GGB edition

~*~*~

That made me wonder about how AF changed things to suit the times, yet retained some things that were already 'canon' despite them being 'out of time'.

For example, when the red uniforms came back in, the book they were mentioned in was written *past* the time rationing finished in the early 1950s in Real Life? That was Falconer's Lure as well, but haven't reached that bit in the book, yet. I know the book is set in 1948, and clothes rationing ended in 1949...but the book was written/published in 1955.

What I'm leading up to here is... will Patrick do his National Service, despite that going out before potential later books would have been written, and presumably set? Especially since it had already been mentioned that he was going to do it? Or would AF have just ignored that?

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

National Service remained in force in the UK until 1960 - the last intake served until 1963. But I think this particular thing would have been quietly dropped by the later books, as it wasn't something he was already doing, unlike Peter being at Dartmouth.

[coughingbear]

There's a suggestion in (I think) Attic Term that he might go into the army, in conversation with Nicola. But it's definitely presented as a choice, though the idea of a time in the services still there.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

When Patrick's cousin Ronnie is described by P. as being in Ulster with his 'mob', is he likely to have been doing national service, or actually in the army?

[coughingbear]

Oh, I assumed he was a regular in the Army because of the implications about the danger, and national service ended before the Troubles got going.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

So did I assume this, but there are moments when AF's 'think of it all as The Time After the War' dating fries my brain. I didn't think I was such a literal-minded reader, but sometimes I find it difficult to reconcile Changear and pot and swirly shifts with Ginty being claustrophobic because of being trapped underground in the Blitz. And I can't even remember in which novel Patrick talks about Ronnie and Ulster.

[coughingbear]

I *think* it's Attic Term, but I know what you mean about getting one's head around the timeline.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had the impression that Ronnie was a) a regular and b) following family tradition, or at least, family tradition since whenever RCs were allowed to receive the monarch's commission in the armed forces. (The East India Company used to recruit extensively in Ireland, I'm not sure how this would have worked with the national army. Possibly nobody cared much about the religion of cannon-fodder peasantry.)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Or Ronnie came from the same side of the family as the vicar cousin from Falconer's Lure? I don't remember ever actually seeing him attending Mass.

[coughingbear]

I can't remember which of the Catholic relief Acts allowed them to become army officers, but I think it was the 1778 one. Though I also like ankaret's suggestion that he's related to the Falconer's Lure vicar.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

In Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green we have regular Army officers with cousins in the IRB.

[owl]

Yes, isn't he in the Guards? I definitely remember Ginny being admired about something along those lines.

[meerium.livejournal.com]

if it's useful, the british army were first deployed in ulster in august 1969, following the battle of the bogside in derry. the stormont government at the time requested their deployment on the 14th august.

my (late) father was in the ruc and we have family friends who he met while they were over on tours of duty in the early 70s, with either the royal lifeguards or the blues and royals (can't remember for definite which, but i'm pretty sure it's the former)

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm Irish, too, and all too well aware of dates of British army deployment - it was just the AF dating issues (such as the kind of thing raised by the OP re national service - does she commit anachronisms if they are in her canon, like the Dartmouth cadet issue) that threw me into confusion over whether it would have been possible for Ronnie Merrick to be in the North on national service.

[meerium.livejournal.com]

sorry - i was just trying to offer a date at the other end to get a fix on the window of opportunity, as it were.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Ronnie, in Peter's Room is described as being "in the Brigade, with all that implies". So Ronnie is in the Guards, and very definitely as a regular rather than on National Service (especially since he seems to have been there from the early '60s until 1982...}

[kit120.livejournal.com]

This hardly rates as a problem. National Service might have been abolished in the 4 years before Patrick became 18 even if the books had a realistic time scheme.

The time settings didn't bother me until 'Attic Term'; probably because lumping together any time after the war wasn't a problem until the books entered my lifetime.

The biggest problem I have with the timing is that Ginty has to phone the operator to get through to Patrick and it is the operator who gives away the fact that she's been phoning every night. That didn't strike me as realistic for the 1970s.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

The first direct-dialled call in the UK was in 1958; the last operator was decomissioned in 1976. Attic Term was published in 1976, so I dare say parts of Dorset were still on operator service as the book was being written, and by the time of publication it was only slightly anachronistic, not enough to worry about. Nicola does think to herself that she wishes Wade Abbas would buck up and get hitched to STD.

[kit120.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing the research. To me, that bit about wishing Wade Abbas would buck up and get hitched to STD sounded like confessing to an anachronism.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

in general, the weird timeline thing doesn't worry me - at least with the middle/later books. But going back recently to read the GGB editions of Falconer's Lure and Marlows and the Traitor - which I hadn't read for years and years - they did seem incredibly dated, to the extend that I didn't feel I recognised the characters. I mean, it's not references to national service or the blitz that bother me, but the Marlows seem such an upstanding, proper, stiff upper lip naval family. They just don't seem themselves somehow, and I don't know whether it's superficial - like them addressing Mrs Marlow very properly as Mother or Mummy instead of Mum/Ma - or whether it is more than that. Does anybody else feel the characters really do change throughout the books - I mean more than the fact they are obviously growing older? I feel they grow into their skins - become more nuanced somehow - in later books.

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

You know, I'd not really noticed the transition from Mummy/Mother to 'Ma' and 'Mum'. I've not read the books in chronological order for so long, I suppose I thought of it as the nicola et al growing up and not being so babyish.

However, the parents do appear to be far more old-fashioned in the early books, don't they?

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

I noticed today that Rowan and Peter call Mrs Marlow 'Mum' in FL whilst the younger ones say 'Mummy' (although, that being said, I need to go and see if I can find what Karen calls her), so maybe it is partially an age thing? Peter also says 'Dad' instead of Daddy.

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

Vis-à-vis Mummy versus Mum...

In the Marlows and the Traitor, Nicola and Lawrie are still calling Mrs Marlow 'Mummy', but Ginty is changing:


"You needn't worry, Momma," said Ginty calmly, "because I shan't want one. Wings! A Christmas tree fairy is exactly what I'd feel like."

"No, Ginty. Mum is you like and must, but Momma I won't have."

"All right, Mum. And actually I've just thought what I'll be," said Ginty who didn't like acting and wasn't especially keen on dressing up."

~*~*~

The bit that interests me, there, is 'Mum if you like and must'. Do you think Mrs Marlow, from that, prefers 'Mummy'?

pg 37 Faber paperback edition

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure she does. "Mummy" - all the way into adolescence and even adulthood - is the upperclass choice. I think Prince Charles addressed the Queen as "Mummy" in a speech at some public event - 80th birthday perhaps. I've had a couple of (posh) friends who used the term - in conversation to others, not just in addressing said parent. "Mummy says I must come home for the summer." Have you read any of Ruby Ferguson's Jill books? She always talks about "Mummy" - never Mum - all the way up to seventeen I think.

My own (Welsh, working-class) mum made it very clear that "mummy" had a definite sell by date!

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

The only change that really bugs me is all those brothers of Mrs Marlow's having been killed in the First War, which does kind of make fic starring Mme Orly and set in the 1970s (which I am sort-of trying to do) rather difficult, as she would be about 110 years old..... and Pam Marlow would have required the sort of miracle granted to Hannah or Elisabeth to have any of those children, never mind all of them. I suppose I could get away with having them just killed in the War....

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

It's easy. You just have to not think about the timeline. At all. Ever. Otherwise your head will start to hurt and you'll need to sit down and have a cup of tea.

I'd say if you're writing a story about Patrick you could legitimately

(a) have him do National Service

(b) work out when it would be following normally chronology from the end of Run Away Home and not have him do National Service

or (c) follow AF's own style and set your story in 2007. In which case no National Service.

In my post-RAH story, I chose none of these because I wanted to have the Falklands War play a part so that fixed my timeline.

[kit120.livejournal.com]

I don't think Patrick can do national service after Runaway Home. Whatever happens, time doesn't go backwards and national service during the Falklands War would be just too much of an anachronism.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure there is a comment in Runaway Home where Patrick says he might consider the army after A levels (which he doesn't appear to expect to pass high enough for University) but he is not very enthusiastic. Nicola seems more keen on the idea, and says something like she can see it happening - but I don't have the book with me so I can't check. National service would not still be going by the setting of Runaway Home, but the Guards or something could still be seen as a suitably posh occupation for Patrick I suppose, until he takes over at Mariot Chase (which he seems to regard as his most likely eventual occupation in Atttic Term ) - I have some trouble imagining him in army uniform, but maybe Nicola can.

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

I think Nicola would far rather it be a naval uniform, but I suppose army would do at a pinch!

I wonder if he'd do some sort of education in Ag to help towards eventually taking over the family property.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I think an Agricultural college may be mentioned in Falconer's Lure - presumably somewhere like Cirencester. I'm pretty much the same as the person who said their books were 3,000 miles away so I can't check. Despite gender switch and the probability of inheriting an estate, I do see Patrick as being somewhat like AF herself - despite lack of enthusiasm for school, maybe he would eventually have become a rather eccentric writer.