Don't mention Patrick and Ginty...

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Just read Attic Term, almost for the first time (read it once from the library in childhood).

Loved it! Funny, witty, not as intense as some of the earlier school books, and lots of great comic/psychological moments in best AF style.

However was (unintentionally) very amused by the way nobody in their families refers to the relationship (it's clearly a boyfriend:girlfriend relationship by now) between Patrick and Ginty. I would have thought in most families Ginty's siblings would have teased her mercilessly...but the Marlows don't say ANYTHING. Nor do the two sets of parents. Patrick's mother, in his presence, tells a third person that she pities the person who marries Ginty - rather bizarre, given that Ginty is basically Patrick's girlfriend. But although everybody KNOWS nobody SAYS. Even Lawrie the tactless. The only exception I can think of is when Peter makes a couple of oblique teases to Ginty in the Ready Made Family "And who with as if we didn't know" but that is it. And Ferguson does ask Nicola obliquely if the parents approve of the "friendship" but again it's all very veiled.

Is it because they are just terribly polite and English that nobody says anything?

I guess so because in order to discuss what the buttoned-up Marlows and Merricks won't AF introduces Claudie, the amoral French au pair. She is quite prepared to ask all about Patrick's sex life (and wonder at the lack of it). Really I guess Claudie is as much of a stereotype as the amoral French girls who turn up in Enid Blyton school stories (one of them was called Claudine too) though you can never feel reading them that AF's characters are stereotypes.

Is this really how English families were at that time? Just can't believe it - even of the Marlows.

Comments

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I don't think they are boyfriend/girlfriend - they've gone from being 'friends of the family' to the Rupert/Rosina acting, to the odd wandering off and having private conversations, but that's it - nothing's out in the open at all.

My impression is that at the time it was expected that such relationships were all mere friendships until the parties involved were adults, and the concept of 'teenagers' let alone teenage relationships didn't exist yet. They're deemed to be children until they leave school. Therefore, friendship is all it can be and anything more would be dismissed as 'silliness'.

Happy to be corrected by anyone with more knowledge of the period.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The book is published in 1976. And Patrick is almost grown-up - he is planning to leave school. Furthermore Patrick's parents know that Ginty is exceptionally attractive - they both remark on it - and they also know that she is around the house every day.

I do think one or other set of parents would have been showing a bit more interest in what was going on.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Yes, the book's published in 1976, but the attempts to update it to the 70s are rather tacked-on (hence jarring reference to TOTP). The feel of it is much more 'two years after Autumn Term', which I think makes it 50s at the latest?

I wouldn't be at all surprised that Patrick's parents still think of him as a child if they bother to think at all (also unlikely) - possibly helped by his being an only child? Certainly my own mother never thought of such things until she decided to explain the facts of life to me when I was moving out, aged 17 - she was quite shocked that people I was at school with had relationships with boys. Had never crossed her mind, and I certainly wouldn't have mentioned any such thing. And this was 1992!

Also as the Marlows have grown up knowing Patrick, they may well think of him more as 'extended family' and therefore off-limits for any relationship-type thoughts?

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Is this perhaps reflecting the author's own generation rather than the date of the book? In the late 1950s my younger sister (14) was sent to her room for teasing me (17) about my friendship with a boy that involved some outings with a group of other friends, but not "going out" as a pair. The latter would not have been allowed, because we were sitting A levels, so social life was very limited anyway.
(I do admire today's young people, whose social life seems to be quite unaffected by exams, and who get such high scores in so many more subjects.)

[antfan.livejournal.com]

But Ginty and Patrick are allowed to spend lots of unsupervised time alone together.

And I think Ginty's sibs are well aware of the romantic element of the friendship - ie that its not "best friends" in the way that Nicola/Patrick were. Peter comments on it to Nicola in RMF ("Spoony" he says), Nicola has seen Patrick tracing Ginty's profile with his finger on his prayerbook, and Lawrie, hilariously, suggests that Ginty and Patrick have sneaked off to Kingscote's local pub and been caught drinking cider.

I think everyone is aware that "something" is going on, but apart from Nicola, who probably has her own reasons for keeping stum, the rest of them are abnormally polite.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone assumes they're having sex, but I had certainly gotten the impression everyone thinks they're smooching in corners. That's not the kind of thing that it seems to me that Pam Marlow or the Merricks would be unrealistic about. Now, the Merricks have presumably NOT spotted that Claudie's the type to have a boyfriend over at the earliest opportunity, but not so much because they think she's morally above it, as they assume she wouldn't use their house that way. Okay, I'm guessing, but that was the sense I got.

[helixaspersa.livejournal.com]

The scenes with Claudie are very bold I think. I was pretty old the first time I read them - 17 or so - but even so I missed some of it. She doesn't just ask about his sex life, she propositions him. The fact that he realises that she is doing so - and that they go on to have a brief discussion of the ethics of that sort of thing (casual sex OK, he thinks, if he was actually paying for it, but otherwise not) - reflects as well upon all their scenes together - she flirts, he pretends to be irritated, but actually - evidently - both enjoys it and finds it a bit of a turn on. She is, presumably, not much older than the Marlow girls, but she is clearly groomed and dressed as a woman, not a girl; and a woman who is having affairs of her own - which Patrick finds exciting. Very revealing too when it emerges that Claudie, a daily element in his life, is not something he has mentioned to Ginty until very late on (I can't remember exactly the conversation where it comes up).

The psychological setting of the whole Patrick side of the story in Autumn Term is pretty masterful I think - the blend of frustration and depression and loneliness; religious doubt, mild parental neglect and simmering lust!

The scene where he dances with Claudie is also both very touching and very acute I think. Patrick learns something pretty major in this book - that you can be sexually attracted to someone you are not sure you like or respect; but also that moments of real intimacy can emerge in surprising ways with unexpected people - there is much more real intimacy between him and Claudie, for all his reservations, than there is the performance of love with Ginty.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

'Performance of love' is such a good way to put it. I always thought that he wanted Ginty because of her looks (and, of course, that year or so's extra maturity that meant they both wanted to move beyond the uncomplicated heroics and do something riskier with Gondal) and then once the Gondal was fading had absolutely no idea what to do with her.

I also thought it was very interesting how Patrick not having mentioned Claudie to Ginty mirrors Ginty not having mentioned Monica to Patrick. And then the major problem for Ginty once she gets to Kingscote is that Monica isn't there, whereas Patrick's problem is that Claudie is.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Yes it is very bold with Claudie isn't it...and who know what happens after that concluding kiss? Can't help suspecting that AF is setting up Claudie as Patrick's wild oats while emotionally he returns to Nicola...not that we will ever know. I don't think Claudie is mentioned in Run Away Home is she?

And the stunning remark about "paid for" sex being alright...can never work out how that comment ended up in the book. Or if it means what it seems to mean. Or how that can fit into Patrick's/AF's world view.

The psychological setting of the whole Patrick side of the story is pretty masterful I think - the blend of frustration and depression and loneliness; religious doubt, mild parental neglect and simmering lust!

Do really agree with that, Helixaspera. And I think that Patrick is having to reconsider so many of his former certainties, and having a lousy time at school, makes him a lot more appealing as a character. (Speaking as someone who finds him extremely unappealing in the previous books.)

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

And in both cases it shows how the burgeoning "relationship" between Patrick and Ginty isn't much of one, because its sole focus is the rather narcissistic performance of love -- Ginty lives for the moments when Patrick treats her like Rosina/says something romantic that she can paste into her mental album, almost like a medieval courtly beauty collecting favours (although I suppose I have that backwards, because it was the knights who wore the ladies' favours, wasn't it -- but anyway you see what I mean). And Patrick, well, as you point out, it's not really clear what Patrick gets out of it at all, though I agree that it boils down to him being obscurely attracted to her beauty (as a red-blooded if somewhat complicated male) and intrigued by the Gondal version of himself that Ginty sees him as. IIRC he doesn't actually disagree with his mother when she makes disparaging remarks about Ginty.

In any event, he clearly has no idea about who she is really and what her life consists of when he's not there -- and no more does she about him.

Mind you, I haven't read Attic Term in donkey's years, or any of the termtime books for that matter. I wish GGBP would get over their disdain for AF and do something about securing those copyrights/reprinting the books.

[coughingbear]

That's very astute - I had thought about the Claudie/Monica not-mentioning thing (Patrick doesn't ever really know about Monica, does he? I think he only half believes she exists when Ginty goes to stay with her), but not the mirrored problems of presence/absence.

I think they both don't really know what to do with the other, both performing. Nicola observes that Ginty is, with the books she is borrowing from Patrick, but the reader can see that Patrick is too.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Even in 1976, Patrick's older than me, and I was brought up in a household where childhood sex just didn't happen. And in many ways, Patrick's a pretty immature 17 year old, possibly because it never seems to have occurred to him to rebel against his parents - so he's never needed to grow up particularly. So I don't think it necessarily occurred to his parents that he and Ginty were a couple, as such, any more than he and Nicola had been. We know from the books what the difference was, but Mrs. Merrick's comment especially about pitying the man who marries her, suggests to me that they haven't quite spotted the exclusive relationship yet.

I suspect Ginty is still too young to take the lead, though by next summer, I wouldn't be quite so sure.

Maybe the absence of teasing is because the other children aren't quite sure what is going on? Are they "just good friends", or something more? Don't stir the pot too much. Even when Peter does mention Ginty and Patrick getting spoony, he's talking to Nicola, not Ginty.

(Incidentally, last time through Attic Term I realised that when Patrick is dancing twice round the corridor with Claudie and kissing her, she's only just got out of bed. And at risk of stereotyping, I doubt that a French 19ish-year-old glamour-puss is wearing Karen's striped pyjamas!)

[antfan.livejournal.com]

But isn't Mrs Merrick's remark to Claudie but directed at Patrick? Also she says..."the face that launched a thousand ships before she's much older, my husband says..." so clearly the Merrick parents have been discussing Ginty; Mrs M also says to Claudie and Patrick in the same conversation that Ginty is bound to marry young..."and that frankly I pity the young man who gets her". So I think the Merrick parents are pretty aware of Ginty and that she represents something more than the Nicola friendship. But they don't really talk to Patrick about it most of the - they are just hoping it blows over.

Similarly they are not surprised that Patrick and Ginty have been talking every night by phone - only that Patrick was stupid enough to think Kingscote would have allowed it. And Mr Merrick compares Ginty to the Lady of Shallott - so he has obviously been giving her some thought, both in terms of looks and character. I think they are just hoping it is something that will low over...but both are probably a little nervous in case it doesn't.

Don't mention Patrick and Ginty

[(Anonymous)]

I seem to recall that Ann is aware of some kind of relationship between Ginty and Patrick - the 'hammock' scene, I think, where she asks Ginty if her dolefulness has anything to do with Patrick

Re: Don't mention Patrick and Ginty

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can't help feeling that Ann being aware would be another reason no-one else would bother, either because if Ann knows she'll make sure it is all right, or because if Ann knows, it is the sort of boring thing one shouldn'tbother about!

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I can't help wondering exactly what Patrick is doing in his room in Attic Term when he's lying on his bed (I think) wishing he could whistle and Ginty would be there, bearing in mind what most teenage boys spend their time doing in their rooms.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I have always assumed that he was at the very least engaging in erotic fancies.

[charverz.livejournal.com]

My reading of Patrick, based on my own 1960s Catholic adolescence, is that he's trying hard not to have erotic fantasies. When he fails forms the basis of most of his confessions.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I can certainly think Claudie is a stereotype. I think she's a TERRIBLE stereotype. *Deep* desire to crown her with a soup ladle for being nearly as bad as Fleur in Harry Potter.

patrick

[elainerees.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether Patrick's antipathy to Vatican Two is really just conservatism as much as anything else - it's a thing he has in common with Nick, not liking change, and liking family history.... and in fact Nick compares V2 to 'that scrudgy government after the war who scrapped the Nelson Annuity'. Patrick, AF and Nick all like things to be how they've always been, whether that's where you live, what your church is like, or a Nelson Annuity (whatever one of those is when it's at home).

Nelson Annuity

[(Anonymous)]

I just googled the Nelson Annuity and came up with Hansard exchanges from the 40s and 50s - apparently it was £5,000 paid to Nelson's family (descendants of his brother, not Emma Hamilton) and it was paid out for over 140 years! It seems to me perfectly reasonable for the post war government to abolish it - they had previously offered to buy the family out for a lump sum - and they relaxed the trust on the Nelsons' estates, so the family were better off in that respect.

That Scroogish goverment Nick refers to was also the one that created the NHS, among other things. Yes, I guess she and Patrick are innately conservative in some respects...but also quite anti-establishment in others.

Lizzzar

[(Anonymous)]

I think that the Merrick parents definitely think that
there is more than just friendship between Patrick and Ginty
and are making their disapproval clear in a slightly indirect way.
I remember Patrick thinking something like if his mother was on
to him about marriage he could just about manage to concentrate
on his melon and tune it out, or something like that ( don't have
the book with me, as usual). Also, I thought he was almost sixteen,
not seventeen. He's certainly a grown up teenager in many ways,
even if he effectively admits to Claudie that he hasn't had sex.

how old is Patrick?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, it does say he's fifteen in Attic Term...at least Ginty says "only the terribly bright people take them at fifteen at our place" - ah, but he's taking them a year late, isn't he, so he's sixteen.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I also found echoes of Midsummer Night's Death by KM Peyton in Attic Term. It's a boarding school story but the rather disaffected hero, Jonathan, reminds me of Patrick, and the school and teachers remind me of his school too. (ie quite unpleasant) There's a lot of smouldering repressed sexuality too as I recall. And both heroes have very privileged horsy home lifes.

Midsummer Nights Death was published in 1978 and Attic Term in 1976 so I guess any echoes are the other way round - think Peyton is also on record as saying that she based her character Peter McNair (Jonathan's best friend) on Peter Marlow.