Memoranda

Thursday Afternoon (1): Lawrie Runs for It

This book may be an action-packed thriller, but there’s still room for some droll humour. In this chapter, it’s revealed that Lawrie’s grand escape is actually the result of her accidentally tripping over while daydreaming, falling into a hollow and getting separated from the others by the thick fog. I also liked film-obsessed Lawrie’s reaction to the initial appearance of Foley:

“…to meet a man with a gun in an empty house seemed to Lawrie a perfectly possible thing to happen. Really, when you remembered the number of times it happened in films, it was only surprising that it hadn’t happened sooner. She was, she found to her annoyance, a bit scared, because even though spies and gangsters always came to a sticky end in the last reel, the innocent people quite often came to stickier ends before that. All the same, in spite of being scared, Lawrie, in an odd way, was rather enjoying herself. She kept thinking: ‘This is how it feels–this is how my feet go–when I’m in films I must remember this.’”

I am rather disturbed to find myself having something in common with Lawrie, because this is exactly how I’ve reacted to crises in the past, except my thoughts tend to run along the lines of ‘I must remember this for when I write a scene like this in a novel.’

In a rare burst of common sense, Lawrie restrains herself from running after the others and instead waits till they’re safely out of earshot, then climbs over a wall (unfortunately landing in a tangle of nettles and brambles). She also remembers to check whether the others are somewhere on the foreshore, perhaps bound and gagged, before going for help. But that is the end of her level-headedness. She stumbles back to Farthing Fee, convinced by her overactive imagination that someone is following her and that even when she reaches the hotel, she won’t be safe:

“You couldn’t tell, when it was a matter of spies and gangsters, who mightn’t be in league with the enemy. Suppose the hotel manager was? Suppose by now Foley had got in touch with him through his secret transmitter? Suppose they were waiting for her when she got in and pretended to let her telephone and then drugged her or something? Lawrie had seen plenty of films where that sort of thing happened and she wasn’t going to be caught like that.”

What she is caught by is the conductor on the bus, because she hasn’t brought any money with her, even though the children were planning to catch the bus back from Farthing Fee after their visit to Mariners – presumably Lawrie always expects Nicola or one of the others to pay her fare. The situation is not helped by an interfering passenger who is “fat” and wears “too much lipstick” (Antonia Forest really does have issues with women who wear colourful clothes or make-up). Laurie tries to explain she’ll pay later, gives her name and explains she’s staying at the Majestic Hotel, and is bewildered when the others don’t believe her:

“But if she could have seen herself–scratched, grubby, her shorts and cardigan torn, her jersey stained green–she wouldn’t have wondered. She didn’t look in the least like the sort of child whose parents might be staying at the Majestic.”

Mind you, even though she looks grubby, I presume her clothes are expensive, her accent is upper-middle-class and her sense of entitlement is pure Marlow, so I’m not entirely convinced by the adults’ reactions in this scene. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, because Lawrie wrenches away, dashes off across the road and is immediately knocked unconscious by a car. Robert Anquetil turns up as the ambulance arrives and confirms that she is a Marlow staying at the Majestic – except he thinks she’s Nicola. Interestingly, this is the first time anyone’s ever confused the twins. Even at school, where they wear the same clothes, no one ever seems to get them mixed up. They do have very different personalities and mannerisms, though, so it’s not surprising that Robert wouldn’t be able to distinguish unconscious Lawrie from Nicola, especially if he doesn’t even know Nicola has a twin.

Thursday Night (1): Midnight Conference

This is a very exciting chapter, full of big revelations. Robert Anquetil works for Naval Intelligence! He’s just been pretending to be a fisherman! Except now he’s pretending that he’s a plain-clothes policeman to poor Mrs Marlow, who’s just arrived at the hospital to find one of her children having emergency surgery and three others missing, possibly dead. Well, that’s what happens when you leave Ginty in charge. Mrs Marlow does explain the injured child is probably Lawrie because “Lawrie would be more likely to forget her bus fare.” Okay, I did laugh out loud at that, despite the seriousness of the situation.

Robert has summoned his boss, Commander Whittier, to the police station, where they discuss the situation. Robert has already searched Mariners and found a scrap of code that was left behind, but no Foley or Talisman. Robert then helpfully explains the background of the case to Whittier (and us), even though Whittier’s read the file. A year ago, the British Navy discovered that a clerk called Ida Cross was stealing naval secrets and sending them out of the country. Meanwhile, some U-boats (that is, German submarines) had been spotted near the coast and a Baltic agent reported that some Nazis wanted for war crimes were being forced to carry information (presumably by the Soviet Union, but this isn’t explicitly stated). It’s also thought that these Nazi agents are using U-boats to travel to Britain.

Still, the Navy couldn’t work out how Ida Cross was handing over the secrets to the Nazis. But the intelligence people discovered the U-boats were hanging out near the St-Annes villages, Robert Anquetil’s boyhood home. So he moved home and pretended to be a fisherman, until finally he happened to spot Ida Cross making her way to Mariners. And then he realised – Ida was passing the secrets to Lewis Foley, who used the Talisman to meet with the U-boats and hand over the secrets.

Before I get onto further revelations about Foley, I have a number of questions. The author’s note states this book is set in the late 1940s and it was first published in 1953. So – why Nazis? Robert says the Nazis, who were “SS men, three guards from various concentration camps [and] a number of minor Party officials […] had been given their lives on condition they acted as go-betweens”. Would Russians who’d experienced the horrors of the Battle of Stalingrad actually allow Nazis to live, let alone trust them to carry secrets from the West? Would Nazis really become spies for their sworn enemies, the Communists? Given that Western powers would be more likely to show leniency than the Soviets, why wouldn’t the Nazis pretend they were picking up secrets, then go to the British authorities and offer to tell all they knew in return for immunity from prosecution? Why is there no mention of Britain’s actual Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union? Now it’s true that there were Germans who spied for the Soviet Union during this period (for instance, Klaus Fuchs) but these were people who were life-long Communists and fervent anti-Nazis, who’d worked for the Allies during the war.

I find it hard to believe that Antonia Forest was fervently pro-Communist and therefore wanted to avoid casting the Soviets as the bad guys. So why complicate things with this implausible post-war Nazis-as-bad-guys plot? Maybe she thought her child readers were so used to equating ‘Nazi’ with ‘enemy’ that they’d get confused by non-Nazi enemies? Maybe she just wanted to use U-boats in her story? Possibly I’m missing something obvious here. However, I was impressed to see her description of the Portland Spy Ring eight years before it was actually uncovered. Ida Cross, the “plain creature” who uses her job as a clerk to steal secrets, bears a remarkable resemblance to Ethel Gee, the “spinster” filing clerk who stole secrets to pass on to a Russian agent and was arrested and sent to prison in 1961.

Robert also discusses Foley, who

“…has no loyalties, only enmities. I don’t think for a moment he’s an ardent Communist. I think he’s only in it, because he gets a peculiar kick out of being on his own against the rest of us. He always did.”

Foley’s sounding a bit like Guy Burgess, a contrarian from a ‘good’ naval family who worked for the Foreign Office until 1951, when they realised he was a Soviet agent and he fled to the Soviet Union.

There’s a bit more discussion about whether Foley is likely to have killed the children in cold blood. Robert thinks this is unlikely, although Foley has “a shocking temper for about thirty seconds at a time”. It’s also unlikely Foley has handed them over to the enemy, because how could he have had time to arrange a rendezvous with the U-boat? The Marlows were an unexpected complication for him.

But then, dramatic news! The coastguard has found bits of wreckage of the Talisman!

Next, Thursday Afternoon (2): Shipwreck

Thursday Morning: Return to Mariners

In yet another example of the Marlows’ permissive parenting style, it is perfectly okay for Nicola to wander about the quay at dawn by herself and hang out with strange fishermen, including with the “local disappointment”, Robert Anquetil. Robert achieved a Double First at Oxford and had a distinguished wartime record in the Commandos, but is now happily being a fisherman instead of “bother[ing] himself with being Prime Minister or anything of that sort”. Nicola helps him clean up his boat, then over breakfast he helpfully supplies her (and us) with information about his childhood acquaintance, Lewis Foley. The Foleys are a “sad, mischancy lot” who keep to themselves and “always die at sea”. A Foley ancestor did use their lighthouse for wrecking and when the villagers came to stop him, he threw himself off the top of the lighthouse into the sea (and broke his neck, because unfortunately it was a shallow bit, but I suppose technically he died at sea). Robert explains how the lighthouse is on a tiny island surrounded by rocks, with a secret shortcut known only to the Foleys and Robert, which I’m sure will turn out to be significant. The lighthouse does work, though, because it was lit up for the Victory Celebrations at the end of the war.

Incidentally, there are a number of references to the Second World War in this book, whereas Autumn Term’s setting, in terms of era, was very vague. But I suppose if you’re going to write a book about spies and traitors, it helps if you set it firmly in a particular time and political context so that you can identify the enemy.

Robert has a number of disquieting things to say about Foley, who was “tremendously proud” of his wrecker ancestor, tried to kill anyone he fought with and seems almost to have a split personality. Robert also warns Nicola not to return to Mariners because “Lewis can be very unpleasant”. Given the title of this chapter, I assume she will ignore this warning and disaster will ensue.

Oh, Robert also teaches her a song, which I’ve made a note of because it will probably turn out to be a secret code:

Injuns on the railroad
Russians on the spree
Sugar in the petrol
And up goes she!

Which is about Russians invading Germany via the River Spree and how sugar in petrol can be used to sabotage engines. Could Robert be the Traitor? Maybe he’s lying about Foley? But Nicola likes Robert and Peter likes Foley, and Nicola has better judgement than Peter does.

Back at the hotel, Ginty thinks that being left in charge is “a quite extraordinary and frightful thing to have happened, for Ginty loathed responsibility and always looked the other way at school when there were new girls to be taken in tow or anything of that sort.” Although Ginty is “intelligent, charming to look at, good fun and excellent at games”, Karen once called her a “very light-weight sort of person” (to which Ginty responded by pretending not to hear and rushing off to play tennis). So Ginty now decides that Peter, being a boy, should bear all responsibility for the siblings. Not that she bothers to tell anyone this, least of all Peter. So far, Ginty and Lawrie are my least favourite Marlows. (Actually, I don’t much like Giles, either. Rowan and Nicola are the best.)

Nicola tells Ginty, Peter and Lawrie what she’s learned about the lighthouse and the Foley family, but to her dismay, they decide to visit Mariners. She reluctantly joins them, because if “they were going to be caught by Foley, and if there should be a frightful row, she thought she would rather be there than not”. Also, like Peter, she has a horror of being thought cowardly by the others – even though, in this situation, it would be braver to take a stand and insist they stay away from Mariners.

They hike over to Farthing Fee, visit the hidden sea and climb up to Mariners’ crow’s-nest, whereupon a fog rolls in. Peter starts to feel uneasy, but they continue exploring the house all the way down to the cellars. It is revealed Ginty has panic attacks in enclosed spaces, especially underground, because during the war, their house in London was bombed and she was trapped alone in the cellar for hours until they dug her out.

Okay, now I feel a bit of sympathy for Ginty.

(I am going to ignore all the children’s references to “Little Black Sambo” and “nigger minstrel”, used whenever they get dirty, because I have already made my thoughts on this sort of period-specific racism known. For the record, this book was first published in 1953.)

Ginty acts as a look-out upstairs while the others investigate a part of the cellar that seems to be inhabited – and turns out to be the hiding place for a box of microfilms and complicated formulae and photos of torpedos. As they’re arguing over whether the police will believe them about this evidence of spying or if they should take it straight to their father, Ginty hears footsteps coming toward them. “Weak with terror”, she joins the others, pretending that nothing’s wrong.

Now, although this is not a particularly sensible thing to do, it’s understandable for someone in the middle of a panic attack and certainly in character for someone who hates facing up to unpleasant realities, so I’m not too disappointed in Ginty.

And really, what action could Ginty have taken that would have saved them, because it’s Foley and yes, he really is the Traitor. Peter actually pushes the microfilms over to him and starts to explain until Peter realises Foley is pointing a revolver at them. Foley snatches up the microfilms and herds the four Marlows off through the fog to the foreshore, where he forces them into his dinghy. At this point, he realises one of them is missing. Lawrie is gone!

Lawrie is now their only hope of rescue!

In other words, they’re doomed.

Next: Thursday Afternoon (1): Lawrie Runs for It

Wednesday Afternoon: The Hidden Sea

Back at the hotel, Mrs Marlow, usually unflappable, goes into the “most wowing kind of flap” when she hears about Peter and Nicola’s near-death experience on the cliffs. I’m relieved to hear this, because so far, the Marlow parents have seemed hands-off to the point of near neglect. But Peter thinks “how absolutely extraordinary it was that it was always the very people you thought you could depend on absolutely who were always the ones who let you down.” Hmm, what does that tell you about your judgement, Peter? But Peter is too busy feeling guilty and cross to do any self-analysis. He snaps at poor Johnnie Thorpe, then at Lawrie, although by lunchtime, he’s in a slightly better temper. Ginty and Lawrie are competing in the hotel’s ping-pong tournament, so Peter and Nicola decide to take the bus to a mysterious-sounding place called Farthing Fee. This turns out to be a boring collection of bungalows at the end of a road, but then Nicola discovers an overgrown lane marked ‘Footpath to Mariners’, which sounds more promising.

Walking along the hedge-hemmed lane towards the sea, they wonder if Lieutenant Foley has an identical twin (“If sometimes he’s all right and sometimes he’s peculiar, that would explain it”) and they feed a pony (the Marlows “always carried sugar on walks in the hope of meeting friendly horses”). After an offhand remark from Nicola, Peter attempts to catch and ride the pony, despite the pony’s firm resistance to the idea. Peter seems to have some absurd and dangerous ideas about How to Be a Proper Man, no doubt reinforced by his father, his brother and his school, but Nicola is astute and kind enough to rescue Peter on this occasion by deliberately frightening off the horse.

Then, suddenly, they come across ‘Mariners’, an old and apparently abandoned house, which they decide to explore. Now, I’m a bit confused about Nicola’s moral values, because she wouldn’t even consider taking a train without paying the fare in Autumn Term, yet has no hesitation about breaking into a stranger’s house in this book. Isn’t trespassing worse than fare-dodging? Regardless, there’s a nice description here of how different Peter and Nicola are. Nicola seems braver because she simply doesn’t think about the consequences before jumping into action (or into a deep, dark coal cellar with a busted trap-door). Peter feels obliged to act in a brave manner, but usually stops to consider what might go wrong:

“His first thought had been that he ought to jump after her. His second and more sensible one, that if Nicola had damaged herself, or if the door on the inside wouldn’t open, he would be more useful where he was. He heard Nicola begin to move about and felt relieved. At least he hadn’t got to cope with a sprained ankle or something cheerful like that miles from anywhere…”

So perhaps Peter really is braver, because he feels fear, then acts anyway? Meanwhile, Nicola has wandered off into the depths of the cellar without telling him – and then is surprised that he’s cross with her when they’re finally reunited.

Anyway, they investigate the silent, empty house, “handsome in a cold, symmetrical sort of way”, and eventually find their way to an amazing crow’s-nest on top of the roof, complete with telescope. Whereupon we discover that Peter is secretly terrified of heights. So, he has vertigo and he doesn’t like the sea and he tends to freeze in a crisis. And he’s training to be a naval officer. Oh, Peter.

But the really cool thing is that they spy a hidden sea and a strange lighthouse – which is called ‘Foley’s Folly Light’! Could Mariners be Foley’s house? Could the Foley family have been wreckers, luring ships onto the rocks with a false light?

Peter, now thoroughly rattled, gets into one of his ‘upsets’ (“When he was in an upset he got rather white and angry-looking, and as Nicola knew from experience, it wasn’t a bit of good asking him what the matter was”) and he storms off down the lane by himself. He feels

“furious with himself, as he always did when a hidden uneasiness made him kick out at whoever happened to be around. A fine officer he was going to make if he bellowed at his subordinates every time he got in a flap – if he ever was an officer.”

Antonia Forest is so good at writing child characters with complex, realistic anxieties and ambitions. Poor Peter, he’s probably under far more pressure than his sisters, regarding his future prospects. I mean, their parents didn’t even bother to send Nicola and Lawrie to school until they were twelve.

Meanwhile, Nicola has gone off to look for the hidden sea. She finds a mooring buoy with the name of a boat on it – Talisman – and sees the boat returning. For a moment she considers waiting to talk to the owner but “then suddenly, for no reason at all, she knew it was Lieutenant Foley coming from the sea” and in a panic, she runs away before he can see her. On the bus with Peter, she decides she over-reacted – but Nicola’s instincts tend to have some basis in fact, even if she isn’t conscious of it at the time, so I think she was probably right to dash off. (Mind you, I know the book is about ‘The Marlows and the Traitor’ and Nicola doesn’t.)

Finally, back at the hotel, Lawrie announces their mother has gone off to join their father, so Ginty is in charge of them till next week. Let me say that again. GINTY IS IN CHARGE OF HER THREE YOUNGER SIBLINGS FOR A WEEK. I take back what I said earlier about Mrs Marlow being a responsible parent. Also, Lawrie pretends that they all missed out on being shown over the Fleet by their father (which is one of Nicola’s greatest desires) because Nicola was late back, and Nicola believes her. But ha ha, Lawrie was just trying out one of her acting voices! Lawrie, I’m liking you less and less.

Next, Thursday Morning: Return to Mariners