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

[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...}