Antonia Forest – Memoranda

My Favourite Books of 2021

I usually post about my favourite books of the year by Christmas Eve, but this week, I was somewhat distracted due to a) the hospital where I work going into Red Alert and having to evacuate our floor to make room for extra COVID beds, just after we’d finally moved back to our usual offices, at a time when most staff had gone on much-needed holidays or were in COVID isolation, why did I agree to work this week WHY, and then b) being identified as a COVID contact, developing symptoms and going into isolation on Christmas Eve.

This was a fitting end to a year in which my state experienced catastrophic floods, an earthquake, a mouse plague, our Premier resigning due to a corruption scandal, and of course, there was that ongoing pandemic with lots of exciting new viral variants. Also, the apartment building where I live needed urgent repairs that included demolishing and rebuilding all the balconies, so I’ve been living in a dark, noisy, dust-filled construction site for the past eight months.

Remember this time last year, when we were all looking forward to 2021?

At least I read some good new books. My favourite novels for adults were The Friend by Sigrid Nunez and Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng. I also found Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody informative and helpful (although alas, I did not make much writing progress this year, see above). My favourite books for children and teenagers included When the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn, The Cricket Term by Antonia Forest and Maddie in the Middle by Julia Lawrinson. I may have read some other good books this year. I can’t remember. I can’t even recall my phone number at the moment.

Fortunately, I have a pile of library books to keep me entertained during my COVID isolation period:

Library books Christmas 2021

I hope you’ve had a good reading year, despite all the challenges that 2021 has brought us, and that you’re having a safe and enjoyable holiday season.

‘The Cricket Term’, Part Six

This is a LONG post but I wanted to finish off the book.

Chapter Nine: The Prosser

Nicola’s hand has healed, with a cool scar that is “miles bigger than Peter’s titchy one” and Miss Cromwell gives them all their exam results. Unfortunately, very few of Lower IV.A actually read their exam paper instructions, even though Miss Cromwell warned them to do so, and they failed to notice a tricky bit that said that the first section was worth very few marks compared to the later sections. Most of them just worked from start to finish, so even Miranda and Meg Hopkins end up with scores in the forties and thirties. This is horrendously unfair, think the class, but I’m with Miss Cromwell on this one. Better they learn this lesson now than during their O or A levels.

However Nicola, who wasn’t even in class when everyone else got the warning, actually read her paper properly and so Nicola is top of the class this term. Combined with her good marks throughout the year, this means she wins the Form Prize! And maybe, possibly, this will get her closer to the Prosser … except then Berenice, Meg Hopkins’ friend, tells them that poor Meg is very distressed because her horrible father stops speaking to her whenever she doesn’t come first or second in class AND the school had told Meg’s parents she was in the running for the Prosser, which is now in doubt for her, so her father may never speak to her again. Miranda asks Janice if the “trap-for-heffalumps bit” will really rule Meg out of the Prosser and Janice says probably not, if the teachers have already decided. Poor Nicola’s hopes fade again.

Still, at least she gets to go into town to choose her book prize and have coffee with the other prize winners. Ann even lends Nicola her boater, against school rules. Ann is being very sensible and mature here, because she’s also had to give up Guides due to turning sixteen and she donates her uniforms and all her badges to the school. Nicola thinks she should at least keep her badges to show her grandchildren, but Ann says “Who says I’ll have any grandchildren?” Maybe she’s planning to become a nun. She does keep her silver trefoil Guides badge, though.

In Wade Abbas, Nicola has £2 to spend on any book she likes, “as long as it’s suitable for presentation on Speech Day”. I looked up how much that would be now and it seems to be worth about £20, which would now buy her two new paperbacks or one not-too-expensive hardcover from Waterstones. Nicola notes that the new books in the shop that look interesting cost more than £2, but fortunately, they’re allowed to look through the second-hand books, too. Ah, the sheer joy of being given some money and able to choose a book of your own and knowing it’s a special prize book! In a fit of nostalgia, I went looking for my school prize books from when I was about Nicola’s age. Here we are, I chose Alison Lurie’s The Language of Clothes, which I still love:

School prize bookplate, 1984

(It was very disappointing to get to senior school and realise they gave out boring scrolls instead of books for prizes, even for School Dux.) Nicola searches for ages, then finds a beautiful 1834 two-volume set of the Iliad, in Greek with notes in Latin, so old it’s priced at 7/6. Miss Cartwright is amused by the selection, asking if Nicola thinks she’ll ever learn to read them, but agrees that they’re splendid. As the two of them are walking to the coffee shop, Nicola asks how Marie Dobson is and it’s revealed that MARIE IS DEAD! She had flu that affected her heart and seemed to be getting better but then she suddenly jumped up “to switch on Top of the Pops” and her heart stopped.

I very much doubt that a teacher would know or repeat the Top of the Pops bit – I think it’s just so that Antonia Forest can emphasise how shallow and stupid Marie was. I am offended on Marie’s behalf. This was the sort of thing on Top of the Pops at the time, although I suppose if the school thinks The Mask of Apollo is scandalous, they’d have a fit about Freddie Mercury in skin-tight satin trousers, singing about a call-girl.

Anyway, Nicola is understandably shocked about poor Marie (“Marie wasn’t—not—not enough of a person to die”) and so are the rest of Lower IV.A. This section is beautifully written, psychologically astute and very funny:

“…they felt required to be sorry and speak well of the girl: two things not honestly possible. Propriety, however, and an alarmed awareness that if Marie could die, so could any of them, had led most people to abandon honesty, as if a little harmless insincerity would propitiate the fates.”

After much arguing, the girls all decide on the wording for a letter signed by the whole class to send to Marie’s parents. Tim eventually agrees to sign it, but is very cross about the whole thing:

“Stupid girl…I just don’t see why she had to die. It’s so unnecessary. I always think dying’s unnecessary.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if we’d liked her,” said Nicola gloomily.
“You mean you want people you like to die?”
“No. Just I’d rather be properly sorry if I’ve got to, if you see what I mean.”

Lawrie hates it so much (“I don’t see why they had to tell us anyway”) that she disappears up a tree and won’t come down until they agree to stop talking about the subject.

Poor, pathetic Marie. That’s the end of her, then.

After that, it’s Speech Day when Nicola will find out about the Prosser. Her mother, Karen, Chas and Rose are late because their car broke down, so Nicola can’t find out before the ceremony if she really will be leaving school. Poor Nicola is sick with worry as she sits through the speeches. She does get to go on stage to collect her prize, and the Classics don is very impressed with young Karen’s sister (“such a pleasure to find someone as young as herself with a genuine interest in the classics”) and Nicola feels a bit of a fraud (“now she’d have to learn Greek to make it true”). Perhaps Edwin Dodd can teach her.

Then they announce the Prosser Award and it goes to … Lawrence Marlow. WHAT?! Because they think she’s going to become a famous actress and they were impressed with her maturity in giving up the role of Ariel because she couldn’t do it justice! Lawrie, typically, hasn’t been paying any attention during the speech and has no idea what’s going on.

Then the school sings Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. A girls’ school, singing that, of all hymns. That’s it. I’ve had it with this ridiculous school.

Chapter Ten: The Play

When Mrs Marlow is congratulated on her talented daughters, she says, “Nicola, perhaps, though I’m told it was something of a fluke. Lawrie, I’m afraid, has just been rather lucky—”

I’ve totally had it with Mrs Marlow, too. It was NOT luck with Nicola. She STUDIED and she READ THE INSTRUCTIONS and she DESERVED HER PRIZE.

Chas says, “Lawrie is Lucky, but Nicola is Nicer”, which is true.

Poor Meg Hopkins. Even though Nicola realises Lawrie’s award allows all the Marlows to stay at Kingscote, she thinks she’d rather Meg got the award than undeserving Lawrie. Then Miranda, sick with nerves before the play and unable to eat (the dress rehearsal was a nightmare), asks Nicola to keep her father company at dinner, because he likes Nicola. So they go off to Wade Abbas’s fanciest hotel and have champagne and discuss his personal collection of mourning ornaments, then she watches the play with him. Miranda doesn’t get on with her mother, but her father seems very nice. In fact, all the mothers in this series are pretty awful – either actively awful, like Esther’s mother and the Marlow grandmother, or passively awful, like Mrs Marlow. Mr West is nice and so is Patrick’s father.

The play looks magnificent and Miranda and Jan and everyone else in the cast are amazing. Rowan turns up to pick up Mrs Marlow, Karen and the children in the Landrover and has a chat to Jan. After Jan leaves, Rowan explains Jan’s father is a surgeon, so couldn’t make it, and Jan’s mother is mysteriously never mentioned (either dead, mad, crippled, run away or in jail, possibly). Chas liked “the pirates” in the play and Rose felt sorry for Caliban and couldn’t understand why everyone hated him, but Nicola explains:

“There just are people like that and you can’t like them–” Like Marie Dobson.

Which is a bit unfair on Marie. It’s not as though she went around trying to rape people, the way Caliban did. Although the Kingscote production probably edited that out.

Nicola finally gets to have a brief chat with her mother, who is vaguely apologetic. She says Rowan made her tell Nicola about having to leave school and she couldn’t relieve Nicola’s worries earlier because Miss Keith only told her about the Prosser that afternoon. All these adults are totally useless.

I suppose Miss Cromwell’s all right. Nicola sees her, an Unstrange Shape, in the driveway and attempts to explain why she’d been on the roof that day, but Miss Cromwell already knows. (Maybe Miss Cromwell really was on the roof, as the cover illustration showed?) She also already knows about Meg’s awful father, but none of the teachers have been able to change his horrible behaviour so far.

Back in the dorm, Ginty’s sulking because she wasn’t in the play and Lawrie is having a tantrum because her prize is a collected Shakespeare First Folio when she wanted separate plays. When Nicola agrees to swap it for her Idiot Boy share, Lawrie changes her mind, then has a sobbing fit because she wanted to play Caliban… Honestly, how can the teachers possibly have given her a prize for being mature and self-aware?

Chapter Eleven: The Cricket Final

Actually, it’s the school diving cup first. I think there have been way too many sports competitions by now. In their divisions, Nicola comes third, Miranda fourth, Lawrie sixth, Monica second and Ginty bombs out. Her friends say it’s nerves, but Ginty claims she deliberately did badly so that Monica would win, because Monica had dropped out of the play for her. Unsurprisingly, Monica is not happy about this. Ginty’s friends don’t seem very nice, except for Monica.

Evil Lois wins her diving division, then the Sixth Formers get ready for the cricket final. Lois is doing her usual ‘Oh, I pulled a muscle’ trick in case she plays badly in the cricket and Janice calls her on that. Janice also thinks it would be quite fun if the Lower IV.A win and Lois is furious at the very notion that “those ghastly brats” might triumph. I get the feeling Lois is going to get her comeuppance soon.

Lower IV.A bat first and the twins open the batting because they’re used to fast bowling from their brother and Rowan. They face down Evil Lois’s fierce bowling and Janice’s less-fierce bowling for a whole hour and score fifty-two runs. I liked Janice’s comment later: “The first hour, whoever you bowled to, there was the same face, daring one to do one’s worst. It felt quite uncanny.” Lawrie is eventually bowled out, but Nicola stays in until they get to 91, then valiant Pomona and Berenice plod along for a while, to Lois’s immense frustration, till they’re all out for 106.

Then it’s the Sixth Formers turn to bat. They really only have Lois and Janice who are any good, and Nicola manages to bowl and catch Janice out for a duck. Then Esther, bless her, manages a hat-trick, although “petrified by success, her remaining balls could have been safely hit by an energetic seven-year-old”. The rest of the Sixth batters are rabbits, with Lois making sure she does all the batting and calls all the runs. Finally it’s just Lois and useless Val Longstreet, and Nicola can’t bring herself to bowl out the Head Girl on her last day at school. It looks like the Sixth will get enough runs to win, but wait, Lois has slogged the ball, Nicola runs to stop it, Val gets confused about whether she has to run another or not, Nicola hurls the ball at the wicket and takes out the bail … and Lower IV.A wins! Hooray for Nicola! Evil Lois is defeated at last!

Lois refuses to join in the reminiscing of the other Sixth Formers on their last day ever in the Common Room and sulks in a corner. I suppose we should feel sorry for her, because it doesn’t seem likely she’ll ever improve. But who knows, maybe she will?

Chapter Twelve: Breaking Up

There’s one final assembly, when Nicola gets to collect the Cricket Cup. Then she reads a letter that Edwin has sent. It turns out the “A.M.” martyred at Tyburn was Anthony Merrick, and that young Nicholas, the actor, married Bess Burby or Burbage. This reminds Nicola that Crommie had mentioned an actor called Richard Burbage AND he was listed in Lawrie’s First Folio. So she goes off to the library to find out, where she meets Janice. Janice says she’d nearly “shouted with rage” about Lawrie getting the Prosser, but explains it was probably Keith’s way of stopping other parents complaining about yet another Marlow getting it – Lawrie’s theatrical talent is so unusual, you see. Janice also mentions she loathes Keith and hasn’t much liked school. She says, “I don’t much care for being shut up with hordes of other females”, which does not sound very lesbian of her, so poor Miranda probably won’t get to bump into Janice at Gay’s The Word or the Gateways in ten years time and begin a passionate lifelong affair. Janice is supposed to be studying science, but her elder brother has turned into a hairy pop star and is no longer joining her uncle’s solicitor firm, so she’s thinking she might do that.

Janice also explains that Richard Burbage was the Elizabethan version of Olivier and Gielgud — the first Hamlet, Lear, Othello and Prospero. So if Nicholas Marlow married his daughter, then Lawrie is his descendant. But best not to tell her that.

Miranda comes in to ask Janice for her address so she can write to her. NOOO, MIRANDA, DON’T! It’s over! Say a dignified farewell, then find someone else, for your own sake!

As Nicola is rushing off to meet Miranda on the roof, she runs into Lois and they are forced to interact. Lois says “we do rather seem to have got across one another…well—it’s been rather a pity, that’s all.” Urgh! Nicola says “Good-bye, Lois” (no good luck) and that’s it, although she reflects that it’s been interesting knowing Lois — not good, but interesting.

And that’s THE END.

I liked this. There was a bit too much sport to make this my favourite book of the series, and Ginty and Lawrie were both completely awful, but there was lots to enjoy. My favourite bits were:

– Miranda and Nicola’s friendship
– that Nicola and Tim seemed to get on fairly well in this book
– the girls’ reactions to Marie’s death
– Miss Cromwell! She’s pretty good, for a Kingscote teacher
– Esther’s developing confidence and Pomona being so reliable and unflappable
– everything Janice did, but especially the conversation with Miss Craven and Evil Lois, with Janice stirring away…

It doesn’t look as though I can buy The Ready-Made Family from GGB, due to COVID, and I’m not enthusiastic about the next two Marlow books, because reliable sources tell me they’re not very good. I was planning to read the whole series, but my experience with Rivers of London has taught me it’s better to end on a high note. So I think this might be my last Antonia Forest read-through at Memoranda. Thank you to everyone who’s commented on these posts and special thanks to Kate C for introducing me to these books. Multos gratias!

‘The Cricket Term’, Part Five

Chapter Eight: Casualty

Well, that chapter title is ominous, but it gets off to a good start with Lower IV.A beating Lower V.B, although it’s their “hardest match to date” and they scrape through with a bit of luck. This means Nicola’s team will face Lois’s team in the Final, which is on the second-last day of term. The only really good players in the Sixth Form are Lois, Janice and a girl called Olive; “the rest of them were there simply to make up the numbers” and Val Longstreet says Lois is being “rather adolescent to be so obsessive about winning”. In response, Lois storms off in a temper, although you’d think she’d have enough to worry about with final exams. But she wants to be a games mistress and maybe you don’t need high marks to get into that sort of college? Maybe it’s based on school sports results?

Then it’s the swimming match against Wade Abbas Collegiate and Ginty’s friends insist she take her lucky clover leaf with her. It’s now sandwiched between two glass lenses from a pair of old spectacles (exactly what Alexander Fleming did with his penicillin-mould paper to give to Prince Philip, who did not appreciate it!) and she insists Nicola hold it throughout the tournament for good luck. Nicola obliges and Ginty gets the highest score in the diving and is the star of the relay team, so it sort of works, despite Ann’s disapproval of all this superstitious nonsense. (Antonia Forest doesn’t seem to think Ann’s religious beliefs are superstitious nonsense, although I can’t see much difference myself.)

Unfortunately, Nicola clutches the glass so tightly that it breaks and gashes her palm. Being a Marlow, she covers up the gushing blood until Matron, noticing her lack of proper school hat (because Daks killed it), also notices the injury. She drags Nicola off to the San to bandage it, then orders Nicola off to hospital for stitches. Nicola, who’s heard Peter moaning about how stitches are agony, protests, but Matron is stern: “Don’t be ridiculous! Do you want to lose your hand?” So poor Nicola imagines her hand being hacked off, “dunking in hot tar to follow”, although a perfectly nice Pakistani doctor stitches it quickly and mostly painlessly and has a chat about cricket with her, assuring her she’ll be able to play in the final.

She arrives back at school in time for supper, where she’s ordered to have a Junior Supper of “milk, oatcakes and stewed fruit” because she’s an invalid. (Given the blood loss, you’d think beef stew and orange juice would be more useful, but well, it’s Kingscote.) She reassures everyone that, contrary to belief, her arm hasn’t been amputated and she will be playing in the cricket final and singing in The Tempest. Then Miranda helps her over to the San, where she has to spend the night. Miranda’s crush on Janice has reached epic levels — she’s analysing everything Janice says or does, and is desperate to have a chance to play Ariel against Jan’s Prospero. Except of course, that will only happen if Lawrie doesn’t play Ariel. Which is impossible.

I’m confused again about forms and ages. Nicola says Janice was “in the Sixth with Kay and in teams with Rowan, but I don’t think you’d call them friends”. If Janice was in the same year as Karen, why did Karen go to Oxford a year ago? Did Janice repeat a year or was Karen so brilliant that she got into Oxford early? I’d also thought Janice was friends with Rowan, but apparently not (and I remember now that she was surprised when Rowan didn’t turn up at school, but then Rowan didn’t seem to tell anyone she was leaving).

Matron insists that Nicola ring the bell if her hand hurts in the night and Nicola says she will, while wondering “what exact degree of unbearable agony would bring her to the pitch of actually doing that”. She wakes in the night “her hand an enormous, throbbing hurt”, convinced she has gangrene, like Hornblower’s Lieutenant, but naturally does not call Matron, because Nicola’s a Marlow (and also because Matron told her off earlier for not being as stoic as her sister Rowan). So Nicola, unable to sleep, goes on with her Cromwell reading. She only has three more books to read, so she’s doing pretty well. Dombey and Son is a slog at first: “it was slushy, it was yuk, she couldn’t care less if that wetter-than-wet lad died, but all the same, it was sad…” Then Matron comes in, tells her off and gives her an aspirin. She does get a boiled egg for breakfast, so there’s a bit of iron replenishment, then it’s back to school, although as she can’t play games, she spends a lot of time in the library with the seniors.

Meanwhile, Lawrie is continuing to be terrible at being Ariel, and during a rehearsal break, shows off her Caliban act to the others. Miss Kempe has had enough by now and tells her off, so Lawrie, predictably, has a sobbing fit and is ordered off stage. Nicola is ordered to fetch Miranda, who does a much better job, despite not having rehearsed it with the others — she’s funny and poignant where she’s meant to be, “more like something magic”. Miss Kempe seems to be impressed, in her undemonstrative way, and Miranda is ecstatic that she’s had a chance, even just one, to be on stage with Janice. Lawrie sulks for a while, then goes off to tell Miss Kempe that Miranda ought to do Ariel: “It’s just not my part, honestly.” Lawrie is convinced that she can make a bargain with Them Up There, as she did last time, when she got to play the Shepherd Boy after letting Nicola play in her place in the netball match. Miss Kempe makes Lawrie promise not to say anything to the others about giving up the role. In fact, she goes straight to tell Nicola, but falls asleep before she can, and then doesn’t have a chance the next morning. By then, Miss Kempe has decided Miranda will act and sing Ariel’s part, so both twins are out of the play. Nicola is astonished that Lawrie has voluntarily given up the part and Miss Kempe is astonished that Lawrie hasn’t told anyone.

Miranda thinks this is “absolutely blissful” and is perfectly happy to give up studying for exams. Nicola asks won’t her father mind when she doesn’t come first, as she usually does, but Miranda says he’d be just as happy if she’s a super Ariel. Nicola considers that now only Meg Hopkins is in the way of the Prosser scholarship, unless it goes on year averages, in which case Meg will definitely get it… Miranda knows there’s something wrong, but Nicola refuses to say and Miranda assumes that Mrs Marlow is gravely ill.

Then the exams arrive and Nicola is pleased at how the papers match what she’s studied — “one of life’s little ironies, now that she knew it was practically impossible she’d inherit Kay’s Prosser…”

Next, Chapter Nine: The Prosser

‘The Cricket Term’, Part Four

Chapter Six: Letter From Home

The next cricket match is against Ginty’s team, Lower V.A, who’ve been coached by Evil Lois and are feeling very confident. But Lower IV.A field, bowl and wicket-keep very effectively, aided by Nicola’s insider knowledge of Ginty’s batting weak spots to get Ginty out for one measly run. Lower IV.A struggle a bit when it’s their turn to bat, but a last-minute effort by Barbara and Pomona, combined with Lower V.A’s pathetic fielding, win the day. Pomona really is a solid player. Nicola should have played her earlier. (I say, with my near non-existent cricketing expertise – I had to Google how many balls were in an over. I really don’t know how Americans would manage to follow all the details in this book’s cricket descriptions.)

Then there’s an excellent scene where Miss Craven and Janice are watching Nicola coach the team, noting how well Nicola is doing. Evil Lois is nearby training Lower V.B, while Janice wonders to herself whether Lois is really only helping the teams playing against Nicola, which sounds demented, “except that Lois was a demented character”. When Lois joins them, she’s horrified to hear Miss Craven suggest that Nicola will be Games Captain in a few years. Lois blusters about Nicola’s team doing too much practice and how they should be stopped because it’s not fair to the other teams, which Miss Craven thinks is “the most absurd argument I’ve heard in a very long time” and also, why has Lois stopped Nicola’s team from using the good nets and pitches for practice? Furthermore, if Lower IV.A lose their next match, Miss Craven wants to put Nicola on the ‘Prospects’ list, where she’ll get special coaching and be considered for the school team. Janice, stirring like mad, says that would be fantastic for Nicola, when not “even Rowan managed it that young” and then adds pointedly, “It should almost make up for that—misunderstanding—over the netball team.” Which Miss Craven agrees with, saying it was most uncharacteristic of Nicola to be unreliable, so she should ask Nicola about what really happened at some stage. And Lois leaves, deeply unsettled.

I love Janice.

I love her even more in the next scene, because she’s the only good thing about the situation. Poor Nicola gets an ominous-looking letter from her mother, so she goes up to the roof to read it in private, worrying that Buster or Tessa have died. But it’s terrible in an unexpected way — Mrs Marlow has written to say the school fees are going up, so one of the sisters will have to leave Kingscote and it has to be Nicola. It can’t be Ann or Ginty because they’re about to do O and A levels, and it can’t be Lawrie, because she’s so immature that she needs boarding school to make her grow up. Both Marlow parents agree it should be Nicola because “you’re a sensible person who won’t stamp around, spoiling things for yourself … complaining for years it was all dreadfully unfair.” Nicola will go to Colebridge Grammar, which must be an okay school because Edwin’s sending Rose there. And she mustn’t talk about this with anyone.

My previously low opinion of the Marlow parents has plummeted to uncharted depths.

I mean, REALLY? Mrs Marlow sells their diamonds and spends it on fancy hunting horses, but now they can’t afford school fees? They’ve inherited a huge estate, but they can’t rent it out to earn money because Captain Marlow wants to swan about being Lord of the Manor, with Rowan forced to run the farm for no pay. They chose to have EIGHT children and send them all to expensive private boarding schools, without thinking how they’d afford it all the way through their schooling. There’s no mention of taking Peter out of his naval cadet school, even though he hates it and has no intention of ever joining the navy. And they don’t decide to send all four girls to Colebridge Grammar, where at least they’ll have each other — no, just poor Nicola by herself, not knowing anyone. And Nicola’s the one who really loves Kingscote, has lots of friends, is doing well academically, showing good leadership skills, and instead of being rewarded for this, she’s punished.

Fortunately, Janice is there to offer unsentimental, practical support (and barley sugar). Jan also notes that now that Karen has left Oxford, her Prosser scholarship can be awarded to someone else, and maybe, if Nicola works a bit harder, she could win that and stay at Kingscote. Nicola’s only real rivals are Miranda, who definitely doesn’t need the money because her father’s just paid for the school swimming pool, and Meg Hopkins. So there’s a bit of hope.

Unfortunately, Nicola has been so distressed that she’s missed first period English with their inept student teacher, who is told by the girls that the correct procedure is for them all to go outside and look for Nicola. This is a welcome bit of comic relief, as Lower IV.A “prance about the grounds, looking under dock leaves and turning stones”, doing Nymph dances in the middle of the playing field. Unfortunately, Miss Cromwell happens to look out the window and see this and there is blood for breakfast. They get a form conduct mark, so they’re out of running for the Form Shield for the third year in a row, and they have compulsory silence till Sunday, which Nicola doesn’t mind because at least no one will ask why she’d been so upset.

Chapter Seven: Dolphins and Nemesis

Ginty is still a bit miffed that she’s not in the school play, but thanks to all the extra practice and her lucky four-leaf clover, she and Monica are chosen for the swimming and diving match against the Wade Abbas Collegiate, which I guess is a girls’ school attached to the Abbey.

Meanwhile, Lawrie is having trouble with her Ariel role, because she just can’t imagine herself as a “fairy”. Miss Kempe attempts to explain that Ariel isn’t some twee fairy, but a near immortal, soul-less being with magic powers and suggests Lawrie read Lord of the Rings. But Lawrie continues to be terrible in the role.

Nicola reflects to herself that at least when she leaves Kingscote, there’ll be no annoying Ann or Lawrie around. Even Tim despairs of Lawrie. Tim’s also not making much progress on her costume design, although she has a good cathartic laugh with Nicola when they contemplate Ariel wearing briefer-than-briefs with glitter, in relation to Miss Keith. Then there’s a good conversation between Nicola, Tim, Miranda and Esther about what they might do in future. Tim has her sights on producing St Joan when they’re in Sixth Form and then becoming a real-life producer. Miranda will end up working in her father’s antiques shop, but wishes she had more of a choice – although she doesn’t really know what she wants to do, probably something in art and design. (I’m surprised Miranda isn’t aiming for Oxford and something more academic, as she seems very intelligent and curious about the world.) Nicola usually tells people she wants to join the Wrens, but unfortunately, she knows she’ll never get to command a ship because she’s not a boy. She tells the others she’s planning to sail solo round the world, then decide about her future. Esther, unexpectedly, wants to be a gardener and live in her own flat with Daks. Good for her.

Then there are some more cricket matches. Upper V.B, the favourites, annihilate the poor little Seconds, in a very unfair and humiliating display of dominance, so the whole school turns against them. Meanwhile, the Sixth Form team, which includes Lois and Janice, beat Middle Remove, who had already won against Upper V.A. (“a bunch of intellectuals who could have beaten them easily enough, but had decided that passing their numerous O levels creditably took precedence” and therefore played to lose, to Ann’s dismay). This means that the entire school, including Nicola and Miranda, turn up to cheer the Sixth when they play those rotten scoundrels, Upper V.B. The Sixth, encouraged by the wild applause, play well, and Janice is a batting star, and they win. So I think that means Nicola’s team will be playing Lois and Janice and the other sixth formers in the final, if they first manage to beat Lower V.B.

I am still mad at the Marlow parents.

Next, Chapter Eight: Casualty

‘The Cricket Term’, Part Three

Chapter Four: Assorted Disappointments

I’m so confused by the timeline of these books, even allowing for the time travelling that allows decades to pass between one school year and the next. I’d assumed that this book was set in the first term of the school year because they’d just had a long, eventful holiday, but I think it’s actually the last term, because Jan is about to finish school. So does that mean this term runs from about April to June, and the holidays in which Karen got married were actually the Easter holidays, not the summer holidays? But wasn’t The Thuggery Affair set in those Easter holidays, when Nicola was staying with Miranda in London? Or maybe that was half-term, not Easter? Maybe I should just not think about this too hard.

Much like Hogwarts, the number of students in the form seems to change according to plot requirements. For my own reference, here are the students in Nicola’s form, Lower IV.A, whose form teacher is Miss Cromwell:

Nicola Marlow, Games Captain
Lawrie Marlow, in some danger of being demoted to Upper IV.B next school year
Thalia (Tim) Keith
Miranda West
Esther Frewen, Stationery Monitor
Sarah (Sally), Form Prefect
Jean Baker, Form Prefect, dim but kind, used to sit next to Lawrie at the back of the classroom
Linda Stratton, now sits next to Nicola, will probably be demoted to Upper IV.B next year
Barbara (Barby) Wateridge, Door Monitress
Marie Dobson, currently has COVID, I mean “a feverish cold”, so not back at school yet
Pomona (Pippin) Todd
Elizabeth (Liz) Collins, used to be in Third Remove with the twins
Margaret (Meg) Hopkins, shy but gets high marks, friend of Berenice
Berenice Anderson, good at cricket but Nicola doesn’t like her much
Rosemary Wright, will probably go into Upper IV.B
Elaine Rees, another probable Upper IV.B
Margaret Sutton, another probable Upper IV.B

There may be other, unnamed students. I wonder what happened to Jenny Cardigan? I liked her name. We don’t find out who is Flower Monitor or Tidiness Monitor this term.

So, due to flu last term, they have school on Saturday mornings, half-term break is cancelled and all outings are banned. Sounds like a great way to create exhausted, demoralised, rebellious students. Miss Cromwell is as strict as ever, but it’s revealed “no actual harm came of standing up to Crommie every now and then” and she does occasionally exhibit signs of a sense of humour.

Pomona has been moved up to Lower IV.A from the B form and Miss Cromwell accidentally announces it in a way that allows Tim to be mean about Pomona’s weight. Fortunately, many of the other girls, including Nicola, think that Pomona is “much improved” since her tantrum-throwing Third Remove days, so hopefully she’s not being bullied as much as she used to be.

Miss Cromwell then orders Nicola to go and see Miss Kempe, who’s in charge of the play, but when Nicola finally tracks the teacher down, Miss Kempe assumes she’s Lawrie:

“I am Nicola, actually,” said Nicola apologetically.
“Are you now? Yes, perhaps you are, after all…”

Miss Cromwell also wants all the staff to know about the twins’ new seating arrangements in class – maybe the identical twins thing is going to be an important plot point again.

The Kempe meeting is just about how to manage Nicola singing Ariel’s songs, but does confirm that Lawrie will be Ariel, full stop. (Lawrie remains convinced she’s Ariel, question mark.)

Nicola is, predictably, taking her Games Captain role very seriously, or as Tim tells her, “doing your Marlow thing … being very very competent and very very keen.” Nicola has booked the cricket nets and pitch for practice every evening, but someone has been crossing out her name on the list. Is it Tim? No, Tim is so uninterested in cricket that she doesn’t even know they use nets. Of course, it’s Evil Lois, who stalks up and announces that lower forms are only allowed the terrible pitch behind the Pavilion and only twice a week. After she’s gone, Tim suggests that maybe, Lois is doing this behind Miss Craven’s back. Tim admits that Lawrie has told her the whole story about Lois lying and getting the twins in trouble at Guides and then throwing Nicola out of the netball team. Nicola is shocked by Lawrie’s inability to keep a secret (really? it’s Lawrie, for heaven’s sake) and Tim is amazed at Nicola’s refusal to tell Miranda or anyone else while Lois is still at school.

“You mean it might get around and she’d be clobbered? Why on earth should you mind that? You don’t even like her.”

But Nicola is being all noble and stiff-upper-lip and Marlowish about Lois. Nicola does have the good idea of having cricket practice early in the morning, before breakfast, so take that, Lois. Meanwhile, Tim is trying to design Tempest costumes and thinks about painting “real” magic signs on Prospero’s cloak, to Nicola’s alarm, because it might raise real demons – although on the positive and hilarious side, the demon might carry off Val Longstreet, their useless Head Girl. It’s nice to see Nicola and Tim getting along for a change.

Then the cast list goes up for The Tempest:

Prospero – Janice!
Miranda – Rachel Wilmot, understudy Naomi Lane
Caliban – Geraldine Hume
Ferdinand – Honor Seton
Ariel – Lawrie, understudy Miranda
Ariel singer/doppelgänger – Nicola, understudy Helen Bagshaw
Antonio – Denise Fenton, understudy Victoria Taylor
Juno – Elisabeth (Isa) Cardigan (Jenny Cardigan’s sister! Is A Cardigan!)
Reapers – Morris Group
Mariners – Emma Hillary, Monica
Nymphs – Natalie Hart, Eve Price and others who learn ballet
Strange Shape! – Pomona!

Ginty, who deliberately didn’t try in her audition, is devastated that she’s nothing, not even a Strange Shape. Her five friends, including Monica, are all in it and are surprised she isn’t even a nymph, but then one points out that the Marlows dominated the Christmas Play and really, she’s lucky to have extra time for swimming practice. And then Ginty pulls a four-leaf clover out of the lawn and then Monica bravely goes to Miss Kempe to say she wants out of the play. Ginty really is lucky: “it was fantastic to be the sort of person for whom others leapt to sacrifice themselves.” Ginty is a bit like Lawrie, awful but realistic.

Chapter Five: Postcard from Home

A short chapter in which two things happen.

Firstly, Nicola finishes reading The Mask of Apollo, but then Rowan sends a postcard reminding her to send it back to the library because it’s overdue and Miss Cromwell finds out about Nicola having an illegal book. Nicola admits committing this Mortal Sin and explains why she liked the book so much and Miss Cromwell is sympathetic, perhaps because Nicola has been doing so well at her schoolwork lately. Nicola says she thinks it was only breaking a regulation, but Cromwell says,

“Four hundred people living check by jowl need regulations, if only to protect the weak from the bullies and the foolish from their folly.”

(I haven’t noticed much protection from bullies for poor drippy Marie, and the teachers have been responsible for plenty of folly so far.)

Then Miss Cromwell asks Nicola why the book was limited to senior students and Nicola says it’s possibly “Because Nico liked men better than women, you mean?” (Oh Nicola, just wait till you read The Charioteer.) Her punishment is to read a long list of Cromwell-approved books, including Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, which really is a punishment.

The second thing is that all the early morning cricket practice pays off and in the first round of the tournament, Lower IV.A thrash Upper IV.B in less than forty minutes, with Esther bowling someone out, Pomona being a reliable wicket keeper, and Sally and Miranda making a good batting partnership. Evil Lois watches with feigned nonchalance, then slithers away, ha ha.

Next, Chapter Six: Letter from Home