trennels | Autumn Term readthrough: Chapters 11-15 (Reply)

I find the ideas for the play that Tim instantly rejects interesting. Funnily enough, she seems to have picked up a good few of her ideas about classical mythology from Mrs Todd's pageants: ' "Orpheus and Eurydice," thought Tim [...] "and little Apfelstrudel picking lots of imaginary flowers while her nymphs skip round to unseen music..." ': hardly how I'd describe that rather dark and tragic myth. It's one of those neat little ironies which I think is only available to an audience rather older than the novel's ostensible market, I think.

Twelfth Night is rejected because 'people always did Shakespeare'--again, evidence of a pretty high and strenuous level of culture at Kingscote: I didn't read my first Shakespeare until I was 13, but Tim knows The Comedy of Errors and is on quoting terms with Henry V. Tim decides to act on her aunt's suggestion to make use of the twins' twinnishness, but has she really thought whether the twins can act or not? We've seen hints of Lawrie's ability (though Tim hasn't, really.)

Tim's interaction with Karen and Margaret in the Library again shows her not quite subject to the hierarchies of school life, and able to communicate well with those rather older than herself, foreshadowing a more extended and important conversation with Lois. Karen identifies The Prince and the Pauper with a brisk alacrity that anyone who has ever worked as a bookseller or librarian will appreciate--the entertaining guessing game that is dealing with those enquiries that begin 'I don't know the title or who it's by...'

Tim and Lawrie's discussion in the theatre establishes and cements their friendship. Forest often states that people like Nicola more than Lawrie, but Nicola also gets dumped from friendships that are important to her: by Tim, and then, more devastatingly, by Patrick, arguably and more ambiguously, by Esther. It's something Nick also worried about in her later friendship with Miranda, who, though faithful in her pash on Jan Scott, is ruthless in dropping contemporaries who cease to interest her. Lawrie's unsettling confidence in the play neatly demonstrates both Lawrie's potential as an actor--this is ground on which she feels secure even though she has no demonstrable experience, and at this stage it's Tim who has the scraps of theatre knowledge--but also Lawrie's capacity for admiration of others--here, she seems to have transferred some of her feelings for Lois to her classmate. (Nicola's much more the faithful type, isn't she?) At the close of the chapter, Lawrie and Tim are established as the pair they'll be for the rest of the series.

I enjoy Nicola's capacity to take small, unglamorous jobs like Tidiness Monitor seriously, and her generally naval attitude to keeping the classroom tidy, which doesn't obtain so much in her personal affairs and grooming, though she's tidier, one senses, than Lawrie would be without Ann's indefatigable efforts on her behalf.

Given that the last we saw of Third Remove they were trying to restrain Tim from going to see her Auntie, they acquiesce quite meekly in her plans: Tim is a Bossy Type, and no delegator, though I love commentary on her uncertainty over whether she can write the play and how unsettled she is by people's total confidence in her.

In her confrontation with Tim Pomona does I think seem spoiled and entitled, though no more so, necessarily, than Tim herself: and perhaps justifiably indignant at Tim and the Marlows dominating everyone again. Another underworld myth reference there, with her saying she's going to be Persephone in her mother's next pageant: I am positively avid for fic describing Mrs Todd's saccharine (?) take on some fairly disturbing mythological material.

Tim and Nicola's quarrel, for all its juvenile setting, escalates in a satisfyingly adult manner. Is Nicola motivated merely by concern for the tidiness of the form-room in wiping the picture off the board, or has she become unsettled by the bullying of Pomona? Tim cannot conceive that Nicola might indeed have become interested in the job of Tidiness Monitor as if not 'an abstract desire for perfect order', then as the satisfaction of a job properly done, and sees merely more Marlow pot-hunting. We're told that 'on the infrequent occasions when she lost her temper [Tim] surprised herself by the things she found to say' though to me, Tim's capable of very conscious spite. Still, the feeling of saying something the cruelty of which one realises only when it is articulated is probably familiar to most people, a sort of esprit de l'escalier in reverse. Nicola's riposte is painfully feeble compared to Tim's scalpel-sharp evisceration; demonstrating Nicola's essential goodness of heart, I suppose, but I can't help enjoying Tim's sharkish instinct for blood.

Finally: 'People ought to keep these things to themselves, very secret and private, so that outside people shouldn't be able to lean across and say "What's up [...]" in those silly nudging kind of voices people used when something happened that mattered a good deal to one person and was only something to be gossiped over by the others.' One of those Forest Manifesto for the Suppression of Feelings Moments.

The chapter opens with Nicola in full stolid stoic mode. I like the little contrast with the Lower Fifths discussing Paradise Lost and worrying about their essays; all school stories seem to have a way of indicating That Difficult Age: and Forest's is pegged firmly to Lower Fifth. But Ann is not among the Milton enthusiasts--I would have thought Ann might enjoy the theological side of it in any case...

Rowan's assessment of Giles is merciless, and perhaps better than his commanding officer's: contrast 'brilliant and responsible' with 'the continued existence of his ship and of the Royal Navy depend on Giles being an efficient little officer. You know how solemn Giles gets about his ship.' The lazily, even charmingly arrogant big brother of Chapter 9 is now revealed as perhaps rather an anxious person in his professional life. But even Rowan seems to be nodding here: you'd think someone as sharp as she might guess what Nicola was plotting with her questions about the distance to Port Wade and try to forestall it.

Nicola's fantasy of the afternoon is rather heartbreaking: even at 9, I knew this could bode no good at all.

The description of Port Wade is a nice bit of colour-writing, I think, and the turn from the dockside bustle to dead, flat disappointment beautifully handled in the penultimate paragraph of the chapter. The slowness of Nicola's realisation that she hasn't enough money for her fare home illustrates the immature adhoc-ness of the whole escapade, but I think it's also a marvellous little sketch of an emotion in the process of happening.

Oh dear. It is very difficult for me to be disinterested about Giles Marlow. I shall do my very best, and please forgive any spleen I may indulge in.

The detail that Nicola would almost rather be expelled than pawn her knife, the knife that has already caused so much trouble, is rather glorious. One thing she never thinks of, interestingly, is fare-dodging. Indomitable, true-blue Marlow honesty, I suppose.

Giles I think is revealed as rather immature himself by: 'Giles would loathe having his family around unless he had invited them specially'; rather an adolescent reaction for an officer in his early 20s? Nicola's 'fiercely and instantly taking Giles's part against herself' is painfully true of the psychology of hero worship, but also a sly move on Forest's part which means that, while this is ostensibly Nicola POV, what we are actually getting is Giles POV magnified by Nicola's shame: viz. 'a sister looking disgustingly grubby and practically yowling'. (Can we have a little hoarse shout of appreciation for Forest's use of free indirect style here?) If she really was, then we can perhaps understand some of Giles's embarrassment, but we suspect that she was not: this is Nick's self-hating, humiliated caricature of herself as she looked in Giles's eyes. The shifting POV is similarly adroit in suggesting that 'what Rowan*, disrespectfully, was apt to call Giles's quarterdeck voice' has in it a very large quotient of self-reproach: Giles feels guilty for having provoked Nicola's 'dare-devilry', and rather than take an atom of blame, he mounts his high horse. I think this, though I could not have articulated it at the time, was what made me as a child reader react so furiously against Giles. I still suspect a propensity to blame inferiors out of a sense of guilt at having done something irresponsible does not make for Good Officer Material.

*that she is mentioned here suggests her closeness to Giles--something confirmed in Run Away Home.

I might mention, I suppose, while I'm trying to be fair to Giles, that the description of him 'with his long coat curling from his legs' as he strides ahead of Nicola does rather suggest that young Lieutenant Marlow might be a sight for more pairs of sore eyes than Nick's. That he's undoubtedly one hell of a lash (forgive me, I am susceptible to naval uniform) just makes me dislike him the more, though.

Nick's fear of the dark outdoors is nicely done: and I share her and Lawrie's appreciation of trains at night -- it must have been better still in the age of steam.

Back at school, Lawrie shows herself unexpectedly sharp-witted in having covered for Nick--a fairly rare moment of twinly insight?--and their quarrel is mended with a nice echo of the comment quoted above about 'outside people'.

The telling-off from Cartwright marks the beginning of Pomona's rehabilitation; I'm not sure how plausible I find this--in my experience teacherly intervention in bullying often makes things worse, not better. But Lawrie's grudging denial that what they were doing was bullying: 'Bullying's twisting people's arms and roasting them and things, isn't it?' rings true. Marie's defence of Pomona is interesting: in a more appealing character this would surely be laudable--she stands up against the powerful and popular set in the class who are victimising a girl with much less social clout. But there's little evidence that Forest means us to sympathise with Marie here, though I think we are meant to understand that Tim et al have behaved badly and deserved Cartwright's rebuke.

Lawrie's choice of part--foreshadowed in her appreciation of the female villain in the thriller--illustrates what Forest will develop into quite an off-beat natural talent. (In her difficulties with playing straightforward parts, Lawrie echoes Julian in Mary Renault's novel Return to Night [1947]: I'm fascinated to know if Forest read Renault's early contemporary-set novels as she must have at least one of the later historical ones (The Mask of Apollo is mentioned in The Cricket Term). Does Lawrie remind other people of any other writer's depictions of unusual or eccentric actors? I'm not widely read enough in the period to know if the close similarities I see between Forest and Renault are evidence of Renault's influence on her younger contemporary or just commonly-shared notions.

Pomona's rehabilitation continues--one is glad of this, but there is perhaps a hint of body-shaming rebuke for Pomona in that it is playing Henry VIII that she excels: she was ridiculous as a Bacchante because, perhaps (horror!) she is fat. To be fair to Forest, she does not harp on Pomona's weight as some other writers of the period do about their fat characters, but there is a hint of the idea that fat people must send themselves up to be liked. Pomona does not, however, thank goodness, evolve into a Jolly Fat Person: she develops into someone rather thoughtful, unexpectedly practical, occasionally solemn.

I think that's all I have to say for now. Have at it! ~~Be correctively nice about Giles~~.