Fans of Peter's Room

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I'm just about to write a post-canon Merricks' Twelfth Night party (2 years on from that in Peter's Room.), and I'm making some POV decisions. From whose viewpoint would you like to see the party, and why? Peter's been packed off to Selby's for the Christmas hols, sorry, I had to limit the cast a bit. The only definite decision so far is a staff POV (probably Mrs Bertie 'helping out', as she's much better characterised than Nellie). I can't promise everything will make it into the finished fic, but I'll try and write a ficbit for everything suggested.

Comments

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Mrs Marlow, Ann, Patrick.
Struggling to come up with better reasons than "just because" - I think because Nicola, Lawrie and Ginty's motivations and thoughts are more obvious and explored in the series. Ditto Kay and to a lesser extent Rowan. And suspect there might have been a big rift or at least awkwardness between Ann and others after the Run Away Home finale hoo-ha.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestions! I have Mrs Marlow being brisk at some of Giles's unspeakable opinions around mid-way through, so I would like to pick that up in this finale.

I've wondered whether to put Ann in the fic at all (she has a couple of inessential lines of dialogue in one scene I've already written) my suspicion is that after the events of RAH she distances herself from her loony family; at this stage she's not quite old enough to do that completely, admittedly, but I do wonder if she might be spending a lot of time visiting friends during holidays too--after all, she's canonically popular at school, and presumably has plenty of options in that direction.

There will certainly be Patrick, because Patrick POV is a thing of beauty and a boy forever, as the man said.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Now I'm having a vision of Ann calmly cutting off her family as she did her guide badges. She's as ruthless as the rest of them, her sisters just don't see it because it isn't over the same things.

Hmm. Now I'm thinking about it, I think Mrs Marlowe is wrong about imagining adult Ann not having an easy life because she's sacrificing herself nursing, and instead seeing her as leading campaigns for reasonable working hours because you can only nurse effectively if you have preserved your own health first.

[hooloovoo_42]

How about Rose and Charles? Are they old enough to be invited yet? Even if they had to go early, it would be interesting to see their take on things.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Rose is, isn't she? She'd be twelve; and Ollie Reynolds is twelve in canon, so I suspect that's the minimum age for an invitation to the evening do. I imagine Rose really does loathe every minute of parties, unlike Patrick, who's introverted rather than shy per se, I think: he dreads social interaction beforehand, when things get going enjoys himself, and then needs recovery time.

(I've just this minute written a very cross Fob finding a Peter-substitute in one of my crossover characters at the children's do!)

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

THIS. That's really similar to my Ann headcanon (which does make it into one of my other fics, albeit just as a throwaway line). If anything, the daughter with the dangerous aptitude for self-immolation is Rowan, and to be fair, Forest does a good job of suggesting the resentment and unpleasantness that in real life often accompanies even willing self-sacrifice; and Rowan's is not particularly willing.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Miranda. (She's staying with the Marlows for part of the hols. I doubt if Nicola still fits The Disaster, but it might be amusing if she did.)

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I'd love to get Miranda into the Marlows' home life somehow: I wonder if I might have her come from London just for the weekend of the party... I can see this fic getting very populous!

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Are you going with the semi-canon of Ginty' s having run away to Ireland and Ann's having run away, too, to check on her, which is what we know AF had planned for them both? Is Patrick at uni, or has he decided not to go? If not, what I'd he doing with himself?

I think Rowan' s take on this would be interesting.

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

If you have a staff viewpoint in mind, maybe Doris helping out as well as/instead of Mrs. Bertie? Closer in age to the Marlows junior, she might have interesting observations to make also...
Looking forward to the fic, anyway.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I've already had a commission for Rowan on my own lj, so I think she is inescapable.

I didn't know that continuation was semi-canon, actually, though I'm familiar with fic versions of it (http://archiveofourown.org/works/135737/chapters/194417). I think Ginty has to be around, though; for one thing, I like her, for another, she's the best possible person to express some attitudes that are quite important to the crossover element of the fic. Though as someone who is Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis I'd like to see more Ginty-in-Ireland fic too.

This is set (for said crossover reasons) on a very early Marlows timeline (it's January 1952), which means that Patrick's quasi-expulsion can have to do only with the exam irregularity, rather than what Forest suggests is the real reason; his dogmatic differences with the school. So I have him at home, somewhat lackadaisically pursuing self-directed study--I hope just about plausibly in view of recusant traditions of home education and a certain sort of minor-landed-gentry complacency about the value of qualifications. And if not, I hope the crossover interactions make up for the implausibilities!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I had thought about some Doris POV, though I'm keen for various reasons to write Mrs Bertie's strident judgemental streak, too. The Marlow girls are all decked out in Doris Creations, by the way; they cause quite a stir!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I can see Ann pushing off to a friend's, but still being Good Sister and sending letters regularly, and Nicola reading excerpts wondering if Ann actually intended to sound that snippy...

Patrick - yes!
If done Right.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll see how it goes with Ann--she might become indispensable, or disappear; in any case, I'll try to write a ficbit for you! I have committed Patrick POV in the past (http://archiveofourown.org/series/43245); I have no idea whether I've got it Right or not, but I had fun. For the value of 'fun' that is 'Patrick making himself miserable'.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

In a family brought up in the traditions of the Service, self-immolation in the call of duty is what you are supposed to do. Karen is at it as well (in my head canon she is using Edwin and his poor motherless children as a safe excuse to run away from Oxford), not to mention poor Peter at Dartmouth, though at 13 he doesn't have much choice.

I do wonder how Rowan rationalises the bit where Giles, or their father, is going to come back and run the lot at some point. Does she see it only as a short-term stop-gap sacrifice? Though at the time, she doesn't see it as a sacrifice, she sees it as a practical solution all round and thinks she can cope with it because she is used to coping.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I'd like Rose too, hating every minute (is there a Merrick library somewhere she can slope off and hide in?) and would look forward to a very cross Fob.

I was thinking about Doris POV as dressmaker to the gentry. I hope they bloody pay her extra.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

In some ways Ann might be among the less self-sacrificial of them! Ginty and Lawrie seem to a large extent to have escaped the indoctrination into duty.

Yes, if she's waiting for her father to retire, she's got a good few years still to go--Geoff is said to be 48 in RMF, isn't he--and wouldn't his earliest opportunity to retire be 55 (I'm going here on my own family background, RAF not RN, but probably similar?) I mean, it's not a life-sentence, but it's quite a stretch when you're 17. I can't see Giles chucking the Service, though I entertain fantasies of his dismissal if the events of RAH ever come to light. I think Forest actually does her decision really well: she doesn't quite perceive the level of self-denial involved, partly because of the pathological coping mechanism, but also because of her youth: it's a moment where we see Rowan as youthfully impractical (how bad can it be? kind of thing); important because she so often seems mature beyond her years.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

There is a indeed a Merrick library! And it's important to the plot of this fic, too. I see Rose will have to go in! Doris's POV is quite astringent, as I'm imagining it now.

[coughingbear]

I'm another vote for Rowan.

And I'd be curious to see inside Mrs Merrick's head some time, and how far it matches the outside.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Here's some Rose for antisoppist and hooloovoo_42. Patrick, having been reminded by Kay picking up Fob from the infants do that Rose is coming to the grown-up party and has a nervous system about it, has an attack of sympathy and resolves to show Rose some escape routes if it all gets too overwhelming:

Rose had tried everything to get out of it, and in the end, Daddy had got quite cross. The green velvet dress was gorgeous, and the patent leather pumps, it wasn’t as if she wasn’t grateful—part of her wished Chas could come along too, he would soak up quite a bit of attention with his antics, but he was too young, it would be just as shy-making to have him cavorting about. She felt too young herself. Kay had said there would be quite a few people her own age there, and she would surely know some of them, but the thought of that was much more terrifying than grown-ups. What if they were Verity Lidgett and Gail Farrant, intrepid girls who seemed afraid of nothing, not of cricket balls flying at their faces or horses or noisy, dirty boys on bicycles, and scorned Rose for her anxieties in that regard? She knew too that Patrick Merrick hunted with hawks, hideous assemblages of wicked eyes and claws, like the dinosaurs in Chas’s encyclopaedia, but worse, because all over feathery. Hawks didn’t live inside, like dogs—would there be dogs?

‘Good evening, Mr Dodd. Good evening, Rose.’ She didn’t recognise the tall young man at first who bent to offer his large, bony hand—but it was Patrick. He looked completely grown-up (which was reassuring) and very handsome in dinner jacket and hair-oil (which was not). ‘I say, you haven’t been to the house, have you? May I show Rose around—I think she might like to see our armoury and chapel—’

A chapel! Of course, the Merricks were Catholics: Rose thought that was utterly romantic and thrilling of them. She tried to cast Patrick in the role of Alan Breck, but it wouldn’t really go; his accent was very English indeed, and a jabot of rusty lace wouldn’t suit his sinewy neck with its prominent adam’s apple, but he probably was gleg at the jumping. His legs were very long; when he stood straight to speak to Daddy, all she could see of him was his shirtfront, a row of little jet buttons.

‘Hadn’t we better get to supper?’

‘Oh, no, Mr Dodd, there’s ages yet—half the guests aren’t here.’

‘Daddy, may I? Please?’

‘I don’t know that it’s a terribly good idea for you to go off alone where we mightn’t be able to—’

Patrick went rather red and a lock of dark hair escaped onto his brow. He said in quite a scratchy, thin voice, the sort of voice, Rose thought, that books meant when they said strangled, ‘All right, perhaps another time. People are gathering just through there—yes, on the right, in the drawing room.’

Patrick hurried away, greeting other guests. It wasn’t fair, Rose thought; tears threatened. Daddy always ruined things. But he was at least a known quantity. She clutched his hand, scuttling to keep pace with his angry steps.

[hooloovoo_42]

Thank you :-)

[charverz.livejournal.com]

Library. Mightn't the Merrick house have a priest-hole? Just the place for a young lady to find accidentally and get stuck in.

The Merricks don't even give it a thought anymore

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

There IS a canonical priest hole, and a rather well-appointed one, by the sounds of the description in Thuggery. I have already started to compose Rose Witnessing Something in The Library, though.

[charverz.livejournal.com]

There probably aren't many priest-holes in literature. Anthony Price's The Labyrinth Makers is one.

Michael

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

My own family background is a farm. I remember my little sister worrying who was going to take it over "because one of us has got to" when she was about nine, and ours has only been in the family since 1920 rather than before Alfred.

Rowan is more confident and competent than Karen and Karen resents Rowan being better at dealing with fusses than she is but Rowan isn't academic and taking over the farm and leaving school is a way of not having to compete with Karen on that score. After which it must be particularly infuriating to have Karen chuck Oxford and turn up doing her own self-sacrificing step-mother bit on the doorstep.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Ooh thank you!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Helena Merrick for coughingbear. I'm afraid the inside turned out quite a close match for the outside!

(In this fic it hasn't been possible to find Patrick a school after the events of Attic Term, because the reasons for his being asked to leave his previous establishment sound a bit flimsy and euphemistic, and everyone is assuming the worst.)

Helena was enjoying a brief respite from circulating among guests and directing staff when the Marlows came into the drawing room. Taken together, she thought, they rather had the look of a fashion-plate, more Country Life than Vogue: Pam perfectly Caesar's wife is beyond reproach in her black velvet; Rowan in burgundy, all wrong for that weathered, florid complexion; Ginty in a fashionable but ill-advised charcoal lace and cerise sash; the twins the best of the lot, one in rich peacock chiffon, the other in midnight-blue grosgrain; and that good-looking young man in Navy mess undress, as redundantly decorative as the masculine figure on a pattern-packet, was, yes, Giles. She smoothed her own aubergine satin and glided over.

‘My dear—how delightful!’

‘Mrs Merrick—my son, Giles.’

‘How do you do?’

Some of the things Pat and Tony had let slip about the quixotic events of a year ago started to make sense; she tried to picture what might happen if it all came out—Giles as the defendant in a court martial, but couldn’t quite decide whether that fulsome self-satisfaction would prove impressive or crumple entirely. She greeted the girls, carefully leaving Ginty till last.

‘Virginia, how do you do?’

‘How d’y’do, Mrs Merrick—’

‘Such a pity Ann couldn’t make it—’

‘Yes, the nursing school term starts frightfully—’

‘Of course—she’s left school. But you are still at Kingscote.’ She let a little percussive bounce fall on still.

‘In—in—the Sixth, Mrs Merrick.’

‘Delighted to hear it, Virginia. I think it’s most important that girls take advantage of the opportunity of education—when it is unjustly denied so many.’

‘Yes, Mrs Merrick.’ The girl was unbecomingly scarlet, it was enough. Helena smiled sweetly at the rest of the family, and swept away, intercepting Edwin and Rose, who were making their way towards the Marlows.

‘Mr Dodd—’

‘Oh, good evening, Mrs Merrick.’

‘You’ll be taking Mrs Cropper in—do you know one another?’

‘Yes, thank you. We’ve spoken. Mrs Merrick, this is my daughter Rose.’

Helena had not even seen the snub-nosed child in forest green. She had perfectly glorious thick, toffee-coloured hair.

‘Oh, goodness me—I am sorry. How do you do, Rose? I must introduce Oliver Reynolds to you; he’s your supper partner.’

Rose blanched and ducked her head. Helena feared momentarily for her Isfahan carpet, but the child contained herself.

‘Now,’ Edwin said reprovingly, ‘you know we shan’t be able to sit together at supper. We explained this, didn’t we?’

Rose nodded mutely. Helena smiled gaily, but escorting her youngest guest to the small knot of young people among whom Ollie Reynolds stood discoursing solemnly on equine form gave her a distinct intimation of what it must be like to be a wardress in Holloway.

[coughingbear]

Thank you! Lovely exchange with Ginty.

Poor Rose.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Here's a little Patrick / Nicola exchange, if not quite Patrick POV--he plays less of a role in the Twelfth Night party than I'd thought.


‘My dear Nicola!’ Patrick somehow gave it the inflection of Hornblower, and she giggled.

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Why? Are you going to have me lashed to the grating and flogged?’

‘Not before we’ve had this dance, I hope—’

‘Nicola Marlow, did you just ask me to—’

‘Certainly did. I’m not afraid of a k/b, you see, unlike some folk I could mention.’

‘You hussy. I thought you’d never.’

They were revolving slowly in waltz time, Nicola half-listening to Patrick’s acerbic commentary on the night—it was being a rather smashing party, actually, and there was still half an hour to go before Sir Roger—when she heard arrythmic steps behind her and felt a tap on her shoulder.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Some Rowan: I've clipped it for references to the crossover because my acquaintance with that canon is much briefer than with the Marlows, and I want to run it past a beta before unleashing it. Sorry it's a bit disjointed...

Rowan wondered whose was the sense of devilry at work in the seating plan. It seemed too subversive for Helena, but too merciless for Anthony, too perceptive for Patrick: probably they had semi-innocently pooled their collective social knowledge, with exquisite result.

[...]

Mum’s reward for enduring the new owner of Monks’ Culvery and his differences with the county council planning office was to be a pleasant, chinless Squadron Leader straight out of Betjeman; she must have recovered reasonable odour since the Ginty business. Giles, presumably an unknown quantity, had been landed with two utterly unexceptionable females whom Rowan knew only by sight, while Patrick was wrestling like a weedy Jacob with Mrs Prescott, and had only Gail Cropper to look forward to. Lawrie appeared to be amusing Ronnie Merrick; on his other hand was a dumb, stricken Rose, upon whom Ollie Reynolds had given up before the removal of the soup plates.

[...]

Rowan herself had drawn as a partner John Lidgett, to whom she could safely devote about a tenth of her brain while she observed the company; on her other side was another of the district’s farmers, dull but easy. She felt a sudden obscure agitation: this, which felt like an antechamber to it, really was her life. She had better buckle down to it. Perhaps Dad would retire from the Service before her total metamorphosis into That Queer Miss Marlow; though if not, she supposed it wouldn’t actually matter to her by then. Lidgett was asking about the New Forest ponies; grateful to be relieved of thought, she plunged into a detailed account.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Great excerpts.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

I may write Ginty-in-Ireland; I've written some of it in my head.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that'll be interesting to see!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much. Glad you enjoyed!

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks, glad you liked it.

[charverz.livejournal.com]

That smacks a little of Harriet Vane when Lord Peter takes her to Duke's Denver. Although I know yours will have more drama to it.

Michael

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know about drama, but it's slightly different, yes!