In an introduction to Antonia White’s wonderful Frost in May Elizabeth Bowen wrote scathingly of “the curl-tossing tomboys of the Fourth at St Ditherings” who were “insultingly unreal to any girl child who has left the nursery”, and said the only school story she could read with pleasure as an adult was What Katy Did at School.
I always think this means that she hadn’t come across Antonia Forest, because her characters are incredibly, recognisably real with flaws and faults and foibles. And even though they are flung into a variety of hair-raising plots over half a century they are still completely believable people.
Ginty kicking the sheets and gibbering in future years whenever she remembers her idiotic behaviour in Falconer’s Lure is so real. So are Marie Dobson’s and Lois Sanger’s capacity to lie to themselves to justify their actions or inactions. So is bookish, clever Karen, the mediocre head girl who “does her own thing and pooh to the rest of us.” And Giles, Nicola’s idol who turns out to have feet of clay when she breaks bounds (at his suggestion) to visit him.
I think Karen married Edwin because she’d found she was out of her depth at Oxford and was running away from being just an also-ran. I imagine a few years later she woke up, said what on earth have I done, and promptly left him.
Rowan, cool, competent and generally unflappable, wondering whether she should be revising more for O Levels and concluding she wasn’t the cramming type, and with a lovely, dry turn of phrase - “my grief would be controllable” and her astute summing up of Marmee’s sacrifice of her daughters’ Christmas breakfasts is admirable.
But they are all such satisfying characters even when one is longing to smack them - I’m thinking of Lawrie’s tantrum over Nicola and Peter buying the pony. Oh, and her getting so carried away playing the part of a dishy teddy girl that she forgets she’s meant to be duping the thug taking her to the cinema!
The character I always feel sorry for is Meg Hopkins, cheated of the Prosser scholarship she so plainly deserved despite the trap for heffalumps, because Miss Keith, not wanting to risk all the Marlow sets of fees walking into the sunset, pulled that piece of jiggery pokery. One can just imagine the debate - we can’t give it to Nicola without a row because Meg’s results are consistently better, ah, but we can give it to Lawrie for being a brilliant actress. Hang on, she messed up The Tempest…No, she was mature enough to recognise her limitations! And poor Meg goes away empty-handed to face her pushy father.
I need to buy The Player’s Boy from GGBP before they run out. We have a copy but one day DD will move out and the complete set of AFs will go with her (because I was daft enough to give them to her) so I’m slowly building up a second set because not having them in the house any more is a very horrible prospect to contemplate.