Antonia Forest – Page 2

‘The Cricket Term’, Part Two

Chapter Three: —And Away

Back at Trennels now and Esther is joyfully reunited with Daks. She asks Nicola if it was “your sister Karen in the paper who got married” and Nicola has to take “time and a moderate amount of skill” to answer Esther’s polite questions about “that near-disaster”. Why is it a near disaster? How was the disaster averted? I’m going to have to read that book, aren’t I?

Daks also kills Nicola’s hat, which Esther, always worried about rules, frets about. Nicola calms her down, while wondering “whether she wouldn’t find Esther’s panics a touch irritating if her face weren’t so fascinating”. I seem to remember Patrick also noticing Esther’s beauty and of course, his girlfriend is Ginty, the prettiest of the Marlow sisters.

Speaking of Ginty, she’s been learning Miranda’s lines from The Tempest, so I guess that’s the school play this term. Ginty had spent the holidays rehearsing her lines with Patrick and he had read the most romantic lines “rather well: she only wished she could be sure he meant them as Patrick”. Hmm, perhaps Ginty is more enthusiastic about their relationship than Patrick is? Ginty’s sensible, no-nonsense friend Monica arrives as the sisters are unpacking and she persuades Ginty not to audition too well for the play, so they can both concentrate on swimming and diving this term. Ginty immediately agrees and goes off with Monica to the pool, and Nicola observes disapprovingly that Ginty is as changeable as a chameleon. But perhaps Ginty’s just more socially aware and eager to fit in with others? It’s not necessarily a bad thing to care about others’ opinions, unless you’re a Marlow and believe yourself superior to everyone else.

Ann has unpacked for Ginty and Lawrie, and when Nicola tells her to stop it, Ann incoherently objects (“mainly from lack of practice—she so seldom sprang to her own defence”). She becomes totally flustered when Nicola mentions Ann is a dead cert to be Head Girl so she should practise being self-assertive. Nicola wonders why Ann is “so soft” only with her family, because Ann’s a bossy, competent Guide leader at school with the other girls. I wonder about that, too. Perhaps Ann is aware her siblings dislike her, so she tries extra hard to ‘help’ them, to try to change their opinion? They all seem to take advantage of her when it suits them, however much they complain about her behind her back. Poor Ann, she needs to leave home and go somewhere she can be useful and valued. Did I read in an earlier book that she wants to be a nurse, or am I misremembering?

Nicola runs into Tim, who is still Lawrie’s Best Friend Forever and Nicola’s Frenemy. Tim has a new spiky hairdo to match her personality. They go off to look at the noticeboards, where there is predictable chaos about the casting of the play. Lawrie is Ariel, but wants to be Caliban. Miranda West seems to be one of Lawrie’s understudies. Tim is nothing, but wants to be Assistant Stage Manager and work her way up rapidly to Producer, so puts her name down for Costumes and Props with Miss Jennings, the cool Art teacher. Nicola and Esther are Ariel singers, even though poor Esther has debilitating stage fright.

Then Miranda turns up and takes Nicola up a fire escape ladder to the roof, which seems a bit dangerous to be left open and accessible, but that’s Kingscote for you. Miranda spent her holidays in Greece and Palestine, lucky thing, and Nicola tells her best friend a slightly edited version of the Karen wedding story. Then they discuss The Tempest. Unlike Nicola, Miranda has actually read it and would quite like to be Ariel, once Lawrie inevitably gets her way and is recast as Caliban. Jan Scott is down for Prospero, which Miranda approves of, because she thinks Jan will do it properly, as “white magic starting to go black … but then he decides he can’t go through with it.” It turns out Miranda has had a crush on Jan since she was a Junior and saw Jan performing an outlaw ballad:

…partly teasing, but more in admiration, Nicola said, “You have been faithful, haven’t you?”
“My middle name,” said Miranda; and added, “As a matter of fact, that’s almost true.”
“Why, what is it?”
“Ruth. The whither thou goest I will go girl. Oh dear,” said Miranda sadly, “after this term, when Jan’s left, will be so drear. Absolutely no one to be interested in at all.”

I think they’re fourteen now, is that right? It’s interesting how accepting Nicola is of Miranda’s feelings for Jan, which are certainly romantic, even if they’re not sexual. The other thing I observed is how often Nicola comments on other girls’ appearances – not just Esther’s beauty, but a detailed list of Monica’s facial features (“The odd thing was, looked at all together, they made an attractive whole”), Tim’s “odd angular face, which remained, disconcertingly, neither absolutely plain nor absolutely pretty” and Miranda (“half-curling dark hair, dark blue eyes, and fierce little hawk face”). It’s exactly the age when girls, even tomboyish, sensible girls like Nicola, start thinking of their appearance in relation to their peers, because it’s finally starting to matter, in terms of popularity and boys.

Antonia Forest also seems to assume that her young readers will be familiar with The Tempest and the story of Ruth, which may be an accurate assumption for that time.

Speaking of The Tempest, has anyone seen the film version with Helen Mirren as a female Prospero? Is it any good?

Next, Chapter Four: Assorted Disappointments

‘The Cricket Term’ by Antonia Forest

I am very happy to be back at Kingscote with Nicola and her friends and enemies for Book Eight of the Marlows series, although it’s been three years since I read End of Term and some of the details of that have faded from my memory. Unfortunately, Girls Gone By decided not to publish Book Seven, The Ready Made Family, but hopefully I won’t need to know about family events from the previous book to understand what’s going on in The Cricket Term.

The cover of this book is not quite as bad as The Thuggery Affair, but it’s not great:

'The Cricket Term' by Antonia Forest front cover

Presumably that’s Nicola in her old blue uniform, looking sad as she clutches something. A failed exam paper or a distressing letter? A student wearing the new red uniform hovers in the background appearing concerned. Is that Miranda? Esther? A prefect? It can’t be Lawrie, who has never in her life been worried about anyone else’s feelings. The back cover features a teacher in a billowing gown, looking like a benevolent vampire as she gazes upon the two girls:

'The Cricket Term' by Antonia Forest back cover

I have so many questions. Why are they all on the roof instead of watching the cricket match? Who is Head Girl this year? Will Evil Lois conspire to throw Nicola off whatever team sport is being played this term (cricket, presumably)? Will there be a school play, with more drama surrounding the casting than on the stage? Is Miranda still in love with Janice? Has Esther finally been reunited with Daks? Is Marie still a pathetic drip? Let’s find out.

Chapter One: Home—

At Trennels, Nicola, Lawrie and Ann pack their bags to return to school — that is, Nicola packs her own suitcase and Ann packs for Lawrie, even though their mother orders Ann to stop acting as everyone else’s unpaid servant. In yet another horrifying revelation about Kingscote’s rules, girls are only allowed to take ONE BOOK to school each term! And it has to be an approved book, which The Mask of Apollo isn’t for Nicola, because it’s only suitable for those in Upper Fifth and above! I haven’t read The Mask of Apollo, but I can’t imagine what’s so scandalous about it — unless the teachers are worried that girls will then start reading Mary Renault’s non-historical books, like The Charioteer and The Friendly Young Ladies, and develop worrying ideas about same-sex relationships. Nicola’s other chosen book is Ramage, some Hornblower-ish novel. Ann, the prig, refuses to smuggle Apollo into school for Nicola, and Lawrie is being a brat and refuses to do Nicola a favour unless Nicola swaps her share of The Idiot Boy, Patrick’s “outgrown pony”. Why would Nicola have a share of The Idiot Boy? Has something happened to Buster? Ginty, by the way, is off snogging Patrick at his house. Maybe not snogging, perhaps just discussing hunting or falconry or Catholic martyrdom.

Oh, good grief, now Karen, the family’s brilliant scholar, has dropped out of Oxford to marry some ancient don who has three children! This is only a year since she left school, so she can’t be more than nineteen years old. What is wrong with this family? Isn’t it bad enough that poor Rowan had to leave school to act as unpaid labourer on a farm she’ll never inherit? Now Karen’s an unpaid housekeeper and nanny for a man probably old enough to be her father (please don’t tell me he was her teacher). I don’t know why they can’t live at Oxford, but they all moved to Trennels, then when that got too much for everyone, Karen moved her new family into the farm manager’s house, kicking out poor Mrs Tranter while Mr Tranter is in hospital. This works out for Karen, because she can send the children to the village school and then Colebridge Grammar and she gets her laundry done by her mother’s servants. Nicola belatedly realises how crafty and self-centred Karen is (“Honestly, you’re like Lawrie!”) and Karen smugly admits this.

Karen’s new stepchildren are Charles/Chas, Rose and Phoebe/Fob, of indeterminate school age. The elder two seem to like Nicola, possibly because she saved Rose’s life? Or at least, found Rose after the child ran away to Oxford a few weeks before? I don’t know whether their mother is dead or divorced. Meanwhile, they’re all eating bread-and-dripping and drinking orange-and-cream, which sounds revolting, while Karen toils away creating some elaborate pudding. She can’t possibly let her family eat “T.V things in packets” because that’s “so unenterprising”. This book is written, and presumably set, in 1974, but apparently none of the Marlow girls have gotten around to reading The Female Eunuch yet.

Chapter Two: Interval

Karen’s husband, Edwin Dodd, has copied some bits out of a sixteenth century Trennels farm log for Nicola (adding a glossary and notes in Latin because Edwin’s a pompous old show-off). The journal is about young Nicholas Marlow, who runs away from school after being beaten for saying something either blasphemous or treasonous, then is presumed dead for years, then turns up at his elder brother’s house and reveals he was at sea with Walter Raleigh. Nicola is, of course, very excited by this. Young Nicholas has also watched “AM” (a Marlow or a Merrick ancestor?) “suffer for the Faith” and die at Tyburn. Then he goes off to be a “player”.

Briefly, Nicola wished she were still friends enough with Patrick Merrick to go charging over, saying ‘Look at this!’

Poor Nicola, thrown over for Ginty. But you deserve better than Patrick, Nicola.

On the way home, Nicola meets Rowan and they discuss a money-making scheme to breed horses and have pony-riding at Trennels. Rowan also gives Nicola some advice about Evil Lois — “Just watch she doesn’t queer your pitch this term too” — and Nicola rightly points out there’s not much she can do about it if Lois does start plotting. Nicola is hoping they’ll win the inter-form cricket match and Rowan advises her not to focus too much on dramatic batting and double centuries, but to concentrate on fielding, bowling and batting singles. Rowan and Nicola both agree that given a choice of being awarded the DSO or scoring fifty against the dastardly Australians, they’d choose fifty against the Australians every time.

I think cricket is the second most boring game in the universe, after golf, so I hope there’s not too much of it in this book. But it sounds as though there will be.

Also, Nicola notes that the older Marlow sisters are unimpressed with Karen:

What with Kay’s silence over Edwin until she’d all but married him, and her crafty effort over the farmhouse, relations between her elder sisters seemed practically non-existent these days.

Did Karen suddenly drop out of Oxford and get married because she was pregnant?

The girls have a gloomy Last Dinner at Trennels before their mother drives them and Daks to the train station, with Nicola proudly wearing a battered old school hat handed down by three of her older sisters, to her mother’s horror.

Next, Chapter Three: -And Away

My Favourite Books of 2019

This year, I was in a reading slump and a writing slump (and a general dealing-with-life slump), so I finished reading only 31 new books. I did a lot of comfort reading of old favourites and I spent many hours online reading newspapers and journal articles and blog posts, trying to make some sense of the chaotic world we live in. I also got sucked into the toxic garbage fire that is Twitter. There are some good things about Twitter, but I’m not finding it very educational, entertaining or conducive to good mental health at the moment, especially since the recent ‘improvements’ that cause strangers’ tweets to keep appearing randomly in my Twitter feed. I might delete my Twitter account or I might work out a more constructive way of using it in 2020. But here are my favourite books from this year:

Adult Fiction

'Normal People' by Sally Rooney This year, I failed to finish reading a number of novels that had received a great deal of hype. It is possible there’s something wrong with my literary tastes, but I feel life is just too short to waste a lot of time ploughing through pretentious waffle about uninteresting characters and situations. I did enjoy the latest Rivers of London novel from Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping, but I was underwhelmed by his new novella, The October Man. One book that did live up to the hype was Sally Rooney’s Normal People, although I do understand the criticisms of it and I think I am now done with novels about writers. Writers do not tend to live fascinating lives. Please, novelists, from now on, write about characters who do something else for a living.

Non-Fiction

I read a lot of 1960s non-fiction as research for the book I am currently trying (and failing) to write, but I can’t count any of them as 2019 favourites because they were re-reads. I did enjoy A Good School: Life at a Girls’ Grammar School in the 1950s by Mary Evans, which included some amusing commentary on the ridiculousness of school regulations and the ingenuity of school girls in getting around these rules. I am not sure I can truly call Growing Up Queer in Australia, edited by Benjamin Law, a favourite book, but I found it to be far more interesting and wide-ranging than I expected. I have issues with the term ‘queer’ and I was bothered by the apparent misogyny and ignorance of a few of the contributors, but I finished the book feeling that I had a much greater understanding of and empathy with younger Australians who identify themselves as living under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. And surely that’s why we read non-fiction – to walk in someone else’s shoes for a while.

Graphic Novels

'Skim' by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki I really liked Skim, a graphic novel set in Canada in 1993, written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki. I presume it’s at least a bit autobiographical, because it feels so authentic. Teenage Kim is having a fairly bad year. She breaks her arm after tripping over her own home-made Wiccan altar; she falls disastrously in love with a female teacher with boundary issues; she sneers at her racist Mean Girl classmates; she observes her parents’ unhappy relationship with dismay; she grows apart from her best friend and makes a new unexpected friend. Despite the depressing themes, it’s often very funny and the art works very well with the story.

Children’s Books

'El Deafo' by Cece Bell I read some great books aimed at middle graders. El Deafo by Cece Bell was an entertaining, endearing graphic memoir about a girl with acquired hearing loss growing up in 1970s America. Cece has problems that most children will relate to (finding and keeping friends, dealing with mean teachers and bullying classmates, having a crush on a boy in her neighbourhood) but she’s also the only child in her school who uses a Phonic Ear — which turns out to give her super powers. The author includes a helpful note at the end, explaining the different forms of communication used by people who have hearing impairments or are Deaf and explaining that she now views her deafness not as a disability but “an occasional nuisance, and oddly enough, as a gift: I can turn off the sound of the world any time I want.”

I also enjoyed The Terrible Two Get Worse by Mac Barnett, Jory John and Kevin Cornell, sequel to The Terrible Two. This time, the pranksters plot to oust their terrible school principal, but find his replacement is even worse. There are plenty of jokes, an inventive plot and fabulous illustrations, alongside some surprisingly sophisticated references (to Occam’s razor and Chekhov’s gun, among others).

Catch a Falling Star by Meg McKinlay was a warm-hearted, gentle exploration of grief, set in rural Western Australia in 1979. Twelve-year-old Frankie is busy looking after her eccentric little brother Newt while her widowed mother works overtime as a nurse. Frankie’s father died in a plane crash several years before, just as Skylab was launched into the atmosphere. Now Skylab is about to plummet back to Earth and Newt is acting very strangely — and Frankie is the only one able to figure out what’s going on. The child characters are realistic and endearing and the historical research is thoughtfully incorporated into the story. And yes, books set in 1979 are now regarded as historical fiction. I feel so old.

'Wed Wabbit' by Lissa Evans Finally, I absolutely loved Wed Wabbit by Lissa Evans. Ten-year-old Fidge finds herself stuck in a surreal world that bears a twisted resemblance to her little sister’s favourite book, ‘The Land of the Wimbley Woos’. With the dubious assistance of a plastic carrot on wheels that dispenses psychological advice, a giant purple elephant with a passion for community theatre, and her awful cousin Graham, Fidge must solve a series of clues to rescue the Wimbley Woos from an evil dictator and return to the real world. There’s plenty of fast-paced adventure, hilarious jokes and a great deal of heart, with an emotionally satisfying conclusion. As with Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz books, some of the satire may be more amusing to adults than to child readers; on the other hand, there’s a recurring joke involving the word ‘fart’ that made me laugh like a drain every time, so I’m probably not the best person to discuss levels of sophistication in text-based humour. My only issue was that the map in the front of the book didn’t seem to bear much resemblance to Fidge’s travels in Wimbley Land so was rather confusing, although that could be part of the joke.

I am hoping next year will be a more successful year for me in terms of reading and writing books. Here is the pile of books I brought home from the library for holiday reading:

Holiday Reading 2019

I’ve also noted that Girls Gone By are publishing another of Antonia Forest’s Marlow books early next year, although they’ve decided to skip Book Seven, The Ready-Made Family and go straight to Book Eight, The Cricket Term. WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE, GIRLS GONE BY? I’M TRYING TO READ THEM IN THE CORRECT SEQUENCE. Although of course, I’ve ordered The Cricket Term.

Thank you to everyone who visited Memoranda this year. Happy Christmas to everyone celebrating it and happy end-of-December to everyone else!

‘The Thuggery Affair’, Part Seven

Chapter Thirteen: The Flyaway

Patrick and Jukie race off in the stolen car, heading for Ireland where the Boss Man has a hideout. Patrick feels a “mounting exhilaration at the sheer speed” and is amused by Jukie’s attempts to blackmail Patrick into helping him. Jukie wants Patrick to tell the police that Kinky’s death was an accident. Supposedly Patrick will go along with this to stop his father’s reputation being damaged by his son’s involvement in drugs and knifings.

Poor Jukie. He hasn’t realised Mr Merrick is a “strictly amateur” politician who has no interest in being Prime Minister:

“You mean he doesn’t need it. He’s got it all already.”

Patrick is gracious enough to admit that’s true and Jukie says Patrick reminds him of Jukie’s grandparents, who “dig the integrity rave”. Jukie then reveals his sad story – the illegitimate child of a teenage mother, his father abandoning them, then his mother getting killed when he was a baby, brought up by his grandparents who physically abused him and didn’t give him much money. Patrick claims to understand about the lack of money:

“Because there are plenty of people at school with a sight more pocket money than my pa would dream of handing me. It can be very crushing sometimes.”

Jukie, understandably, is furious:

“You got cars ’n hosses ’n butlers ’n a rafty great house ’n loot stacked in the vaults […] ’n I’m starting fr’m scratch.”

But Patrick is “convinced he really did know how it could be”. Honestly, are we meant to feel sorry for Patrick only having “a middle-aged Rolls” for transport?

They pull up at a garage for petrol, where Patrick goes to the toilet, after promising not to escape. (Why does Jukie care whether he escapes or not? He could just drive off.) Patrick doesn’t alert the garage attendant or phone the police, but he does write a message on the dusty glass window. Make up your mind, Patrick! Are you helping Jukie or not?! Meanwhile Jukie has used his “best Culver” voice to convince the attendant they’re just a couple of posh boys who’ve borrowed their uncle’s car.

So the boys drive off and we hear more of the Jukie Clark autobiography. He stole his grandparents’ money to buy clothes, his grandfather beat him up and burnt the clothes, so Jukie embarked on a life of petty crime. He was caught by the police due to his grandfather’s tipoff, then his grandfather refused to take him back and Jukie was sent off to an Approved School. It was a “highly civilized cage” and Jukie was a model pupil for a month, except the Top Brass required not just shallow obedience to rules but true repentance. And Jukie did not want to humble himself before God and repent, so he escaped and thereby damned himself. The sermon is not quite that explicit, but it’s there.

While this is going on, Patrick is reaching into Jukie’s pocket for cigarettes and lighting them and sticking them between Jukie’s lips and staring into Jukie’s eyes. I take back what I said earlier about there being no Patrick/Jukie sexual tension.

Anyway, by an AMAZING COINCIDENCE, after Jukie fled the school, he ended up outside the Culver place just as Maudie had put an ad in the paper for a pigeon helper, and as he was so eager and cheap, Maudie organised for more troubled boys to work for her (“top-class social do-good ’n likewise practically free labour”). Then Espresso’s Da arranged for Jukie to meet the Boss Man and the drug smuggling started.

At this point, Marlene Dietrich comes on the radio singing Where Have All The Flowers Gone? and Jukie is panic-stricken when he realises Kinky is actually dead. There’s a lot of “mutual, exasperated incomprehension” between the two boys as Patrick gives a confusing explanation of the Catholic rituals of death and whether the absence of a priest and holy oil means Kinky is destined for eternal hellfire. Patrick is feeling a bit guilty about being responsible for the knife being at the scene, which made me sympathise with Jukie’s exasperation, because honestly, how could Kinky’s death possibly be Patrick’s moral responsibility? There’s also a bit of theological discussion about how to live their lives if they’re all going to get blown up by the H bomb any moment now.

Chapter Fourteen: The Homing Instinct

Jukie is having second thoughts about going to Ireland, because maybe the Boss Man will either lose him in a bog or hand him over to the police. There’s no way Jukie wants to spend twelve years in prison, but he can’t go to his grandparents. Patrick comes up with the idea of Jukie leaving on the drug-smuggling boat. It means they have to send a signal by six o’clock, then Jukie will hide out in the Merrick’s priest room. Patrick will have to pretend Jukie dropped him off and then drove on to Liverpool, but although Patrick is willing to help a murderer evade the law, he refuses to tell an outright lie to the police. Jukie is justifiably baffled.

“But for why? Like man, it’s not logical.”

Jukie has some baffling notions of his own. Although he’s an atheist, he thinks the afterlife could consist of whatever an individual believed in life. He pulls up at a phone booth and tells Patrick to ring a priest and find out exactly how to save Kinky’s Catholic soul. Patrick usually laughs at “do-it-yourself theology” like this (Patrick, stop being so smug, ALL theology is made up by humans), but he agrees to try. But then Jukie, remembering Patrick left a message at the garage and is not entirely on Jukie’s side, stops him.

“…I never trust no one. Mind Herbert, I don’t expect no one to be so simple as to trust me neither.”

I think they both need some sleep. Which they are forced to have, because Jukie is getting a migraine and can’t drive. Then they oversleep, argue about whether it’s Patrick’s fault, speed off into the sunrise and reach a roadblock at Culverstone Bridge, with Tom Catchpole blocking their way. Jukie puts his foot down, Patrick tries to reason with him, realises Jukie won’t stop and grabs the wheel. There is a very dramatic car crash. Jukie dies in flames. Patrick is thrown clear of the car and is unharmed. Oh, what a surprise.

Poor Mr Merrick. As if it wasn’t bad enough for him when Patrick fell off that cliff and nearly died. Patrick blatantly takes advantage of the situation to tell his father that Regina is back, then he gives the Inspector a mostly true account of events. He has no moral problem with lying that Jukie was going to turn himself in and swerved the car to avoid Tom. This is supposedly for the sake of Jukie’s grandparents. Then Patrick and Peter catch up with events. Espresso has spilled the beans (the coffee beans, get it?) and it turns out the Boss Man was actually Espresso’s Da and that Maudie was in on the whole thing, but Jukie didn’t know about any of this. Poor Jukie, betrayed even by his Thugs. Also, the remaining Thugs got into a vicious fight before they’d even left Culverstone, although I’m not sure if they’re dead or just badly wounded. Also, Mrs Marlow called the priest when she saw Kinky’s rosary beads so Kinky’s soul is saved. Mrs Marlow was “rather moved” by the ritual. She’s not going to convert to Catholicism, is she?

Oh, and Patrick remembers the drugs he’d hidden from the Thugs and shows Peter:

“Even the police weren’t likely to want it now.”

WHAT?! It’s evidence! So, the boys keep the drugs? After all the trouble they went to bring down the evil drug dealers? What are they going to do with it, throw a coke-fuelled party?

I suppose if they sell it to their school mates, they can buy Ann a new bike.

THE END.

Well, that was a lot better than I expected. I mean, the plot was absolutely ludicrous, but the story rocketed along and there were some genuinely interesting bits, especially the relationship between Patrick and Jukie at the end. I enjoyed Lawrie and Peter’s chapters and if this had been the first Marlow book I’d read, I’d probably conclude that Patrick was a fascinating and sympathetic character. I didn’t even miss Nicola – I can see that it wouldn’t have worked to have a brave, sensible character like her in this story. Mind you, I’d have quite happily read a book about Nicola and Miranda wandering around London having deep and meaningful conversations…

I’d hoped the next book would be a school book, but it’s The Ready Made Family.

You might also be interested in reading:

The Thuggery Affair, Part One
The Thuggery Affair, Part Two
The Thuggery Affair, Part Three
The Thuggery Affair, Part Four
The Thuggery Affair, Part Five
The Thuggery Affair, Part Six

‘The Thuggery Affair’, Part Six

Chapter Eleven: The Dovecote at Monk’s Culvery

Patrick is on his way to Monk’s Culvery, via the secret priest tunnel. Presumably the Culver family were also Catholics in the “penal times”, allied with the Merricks, hence the tunnel and the monk reference in the estate’s name. And did you know that “culver” means dove (“Middle English from Old English culufre from Vulgar Latin columbra from Latin columbula, diminutive of columba, dove”)? So Maudie Culver comes from a long line of pigeon people.

Patrick feels “bold and gay” to be trespassing and possibly stealing pigeons, but “the cause was irreproachable”. Still, he can’t help hearing in his head Patrick Shaw-Stewart’s poem about Gallipoli:

“I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die:
I ask, and cannot answer,
If otherwise wish I.”

Just to make things even more dangerous, Patrick’s brought with him a throwing knife owned by his dodgy eighteenth-century cousin. Hmm, and we already know that a corpse (or possibly just a badly-wounded person) is going to appear soon on the storeroom floor…

Patrick very courageously climbs the high Dovecote wall (it’s a good thing Peter didn’t take on this task) and manages to break in through a tiny door. He climbs down to the floor and unfortunately falls asleep, which is not surprising given he was up before dawn. Also unfortunately, his watch has stopped working (“as it invariably did when he forgot to wind it”) so who knows how long he stays asleep. When he wakes, he doesn’t find any drugs, but does find a number of Scandaroons, who are most unhappy about a stranger messing around in their house.

Meanwhile, in the storeroom attached to the pigeon lofts, Jukie is talking with Espresso, the Thug’s “premier flutter propagator”, who is feeding a chick half-cooked egg from his own mouth, ugh. Espresso has “skin the colour of milky coffee” because his father, a pigeon expert, is from the Persian Gulf. Jukie mentions he’s grateful that Espresso’s Da put the Thuggery in contact with the Boss Man, allowing them all to make money from drug smuggling, but Espresso says that no, Jukie and the pigeons at Monk’s Culvery were the way his Da “eased in with the Boss Man” and the “big loot”. This is a disquieting surprise to Jukie. I should mention that Espresso appears to be hiding something from Jukie, but he does seem like a nice kid, as far as the Thugs go.

Then Skidskid arrives. He was supposed to be watching Patrick’s house but got spooked by mysteriously moving trees, “woody weirdies ’n they don’t shift while you’re watchin”. Jukie tells him to stay off the drugs. (Clearly none of them is familiar with Macbeth. Jukie, your reign is almost over.) Jukie also explains to the others how the Boss Man put two of his addicted thugs in the “boneyard” – just in case the threat of violence isn’t menacing enough in this chapter.

The Thuggery realise, via a nifty electronic landing-board indicator, that someone or something is disturbing the pigeons in the Dovecote. And as they go to investigate, they’re met by Kinky and friends with their own tale of woe. The Thuggery, thoroughly alarmed, run on towards the Dovecote. Watch out, Patrick!

Chapter Twelve: “Who Do Not Wish To Die”

Ominous chapter titling here. Jukie enters the Dovecote alone and Patrick does pretty well in hand-to-hand combat with him, even managing to grab the harness and drug capsule Jukie had just taken from a pigeon. Patrick bolts out the door and only gets caught because he trips and The Thuggery catch up. Jukie stops them stomping Patrick to death (“We need him conscious cause we need to quiz him”) and they march him back to the storeroom. Patrick does manage to conceal the drugs in his waistband and lie about this convincingly and the Thuggery waste some time trying to find the drug capsule in the dusk.

They also take Patrick’s knife off him and “Patrick thought it had probably not found itself in such congenial company since Cousin Ambrose was turned off at Tyburn”. (I only know the significance of Tyburn due to The Hanging Tree. Thanks, Peter!) Jukie starts to offer his captive a cigarette, but then decides Patrick is too square to smoke:

“You wouldn’t, do you, noddy-boy?”
“No,” agreed Patrick. In fact, he did, occasionally, depending on whom he was with. But this time he wasn’t sure he might not be being offered reefers.”

Ooh, Patrick, you’re so cool! “Depending on whom he was with”! Does he even have any friends, let alone smoking friends? He does know what a reefer is, maybe from eavesdropping at the coffee shop. Although I just looked it up and Reefer Madness came out in 1936, so I suppose the term had been around quite a while by the mid-sixties:

They also have a very disturbing conversation about Lawrie while waiting for Red Ted aka Rigid to return. Apparently Rigid is a ladies’ man:

“…mebbe he’ll give the chicklet a real live whirl. If she’s willin’ of course. ’N then again mebbe even if she’s not.”

They’re talking about raping a thirteen-year-old girl there. Patrick is horrified for a moment:

“Then it occurred to him that even Lawrie would hardly be fool enough to let herself be picked up by a Thug; and even if she hadn’t sense enough she’d still be too scared.”

Firstly, Lawrie was foolish enough and secondly, the Thugs don’t care about consent so it wouldn’t matter how scared she was, and thirdly, she’s a very naïve child, years under the age of consent. This is horrible to read, made bearable only because we know that Lawrie is safe.

Then Rigid returns with the news that Lawrie escaped him and is at the police station. When they ask Patrick what she could have told them, he “politely, insufferably” explains she would have showed them the pigeon, harness and “more truly than he supposed”, the drug capsule.

Panic among The Thuggery! Kinky leads the others in rebellion against Jukie. Jukie will stay to loose the birds the next morning; the others will flee, taking their share of the loot. But Kinky wants Maudie’s share as well, which Jukie refuses to give him, and Mr Luke reveals Kinky’s plan to overthrow Jukie as Top Boy. In the mayhem, Jukie flings Patrick’s knife at Kinky’s back and Kinky collapses. Patrick is the first to reach him:

“[Patrick’s] hand found an inexplicable thing to do. It went into his pocket and found his rosary … He put the rosary into Kinky’s hand and Kinky grasped it and his hand together … Patrick swallowed, crossed himself and stayed beside him, crouching.”

The others drag Kinky’s body into the storeroom, realise he’s dead and freak out. They rush off on their motorbikes, while Jukie takes the time to remove Kinky’s money from his wallet (“He can’t never use it”) and leads Patrick out to the garage to his own beloved motorbike. Sadly for Jukie, it’s been “most exquisitely taken apart”, then put back together, with the nuts thrown in the compost heap, according to a note the Thugs have left him. (What, they managed to disassemble and re-assemble a motorbike in five minutes?) So Jukie steals Maudie’s car and tells Patrick to get in.

AND PATRICK GETS IN THE CAR.

Why? Jukie doesn’t have time to coax or force him into the car. All Patrick has to do is walk away, then call the police or wait for them to arrive. But no, Patrick gets in the car with the drug-dealer he’s been trying to bring to justice, due to a “maverick sense of sympathy”. Or due to Antonia Forest wanting Patrick and Jukie to have a deep and meaningful conversation before Jukie’s inevitable demise.

Oh, it also turns out Espresso has stayed to let the pigeons free the next morning and he disobeys Jukie’s order to get in the car. So at least Espresso will be around when the police arrive and hopefully he’ll explain whatever secret he’s been concealing.

Next: The Flyaway