Miss A and Miss M


I thought this was a fascinating story, beautifully written. It is a very English story. Set in the twenties between the wars, Taylor takes a coming of age story and by using a narrator with forty years of knowledge and experience from after the events, creates a story with deep undertones. We are given a story about the approach of change, of progress and of the fragmentation of the remembered landscape of the past. It is about the way in which women in an age where male company was scarce developed friendships and found companionship with other women. It echoes time past and time future.

A woman, now in her fifties, looks back at the events of her childhood and sees herself as an adolescent, fatherless city child, spending her summers in the country staying, with her mother, at a guest house. What does she see? A world of women: Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice, two elderly ladies, they could be sisters but we are not told that they are. They are known by their Christian names in contrast to Miss Alliot and Miss Martin. There is Mrs Price and her daughter Muriel. Mrs Mayes, who gives Shakespeare recitals, and various elderly spinsters. We are told little of their past histories and only Mrs Price’s husband is mentioned. Of all the women it is Mrs Price who is slightly out of sync, her topics of conversation and her copies of the Illustrated London News hint at another way of living. In this existence the girl has the freedom to roam, to grow and to discover. Although she spends more time in the town it is in this country landscape that she puts down roots.

Taylor contrasts the school term, traffic and leaflessness with the cherry orchard and croquet-lawn and walks through the leafy valley. This is balanced by the contrast between Miss Alliot and her inclination for ‘orange and yellow and grass-green’ and Miss Martin who ‘liked misty blues and greys’. It is Miss Alliot for whom she develops a school girl crush, who she wants to impress during the summer, but it is Miss Martin who replies to her letters during term time, Miss Alliot who sees her as ‘the child’. It is Miss Martin who she befriends when Miss Alliot abandons her at Christmas.

The story reverberates with echoes, there are the real echoes shouted across the valley; her declaration of love for Miss Alliot mockingly returned is echoed by her visit with Jamie at the end of the story, when they shout one another’s names, which are clearly returned. There are more subtle echoes too. Could Miss Alliot and Miss Martin become Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice? Mrs Mayes recites the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet where she plays both male and female parts, this is echoed by Miss Alliot’s discovery of Rosella Byng-Williams, the girl who is playing Sidney Carton (himself a ‘double’) in the school play, which in turn is to be echoed by women taking the role of men in industry and in the fields during the second World War. The narrator runs off to Breezy lodge and echoes the sayings of Mrs Price, and in turn echoes Miss Alliot’s sayings in her diary. What is Taylor saying here? That what goes around comes around, that things don’t change?

The events of the story unfold over a number of years, we are not told how many years but the reference to the five year diary at the end is a possible indication. We are given glimpses only of the girl’s relationship with the two women, who are both central to the story but also removed from everyday life at the guest house. They have lunch and supper at the guest house but stay at the cottage at the bottom of the garden. The girl is not invited to visit after supper, she is not part of their relationship but an appendage, in the same way that she is not yet a part of the adult world. We may consider her acceptance of Miss Alliot’s cruelty as callous by today’s standards, but as she says: ‘I considered myself sharp for my age: now I see that I was sharp only for the age I lived in’. At the time she welcomed the attention from her idol and did not truly understand the hurt being inflicted, later in the story she becomes more aware of Miss Martins feelings. When she visits Breezy Lodge during the half term holiday she waits for the door to open wondering if Miss Alliot is going to be there: ‘I feared my own disappointment as if it were something I must protect myself and – incidentally Miss Martin – from.’ It is during that visit that her innocence begins to fall away, her very presence in the cottage means that she has been admitted to the part of their life that she has previously been excluded from. When Miss Alliot watches her undress for bed she feel ashamed of her underclothes with there Cash’s name tapes – a symbol of school days – and then she turns her back on Miss Alliot’s gaze. I think this is the first time she is even vaguely aware of the physical relationship between the women, and it is Miss Martin who steps between them giving protection.

The last summer holiday arrives, Miss Alliot is preparing to marry – a marriage of convenience? Miss Martin is already beginning to fade as the two women empty the cottage. For the girl her age of innocence is falling away, she meets and spends time with Jamie who is also staying at the guest house with both father and mother (the nuclear family), his presence disrupts and she becomes aware of an alternative to the female world that she has lived in until now. ‘Time was racing ahead’ for her, she is ready to enter the adult world.

Is Miss Martin’s suicide a few months later symbolic of the end of an era, and the starting gun for war and fragmentation? I am left wondering whether Miss Alliot found happiness in her marriage and how the intervening years have treated the narrator and what has lead to this reminiscence. Memory is selective, can we really remember how we felt at a young age or does experience colour those memories?

A couple of pictures from our walk last week around the village of Elsdon

It is some months since I updated this blog. The most important thing to have happened since February is that we have moved from Leeds to Glanton, Northumberland. This has entailed me leaving my job and Neil transferring from Leeds to Alnwick and going from full time to part time. These are all pretty big changes for us. Moving to Northumberland is something we have wanted to do and talked about for sometime, we both love the area and I, as an only child, wanted to be nearer to my mum as she got older. Well we are nearer because we have moved in with her, and it is working out ok at the moment. It has meant a change of role for me, I am now chief cook and bottle washer whereas before I went to work and got home to a hot meal because Neil finished work before me, house work was shared and mostly done in a rush at the weekend. Now I am not working and Neil gets home about 2pm and I have a meal waiting for him.

Village life is different too, quieter but with more social gatherings. The beginning of November saw the start of the fox hunting season, and the first meet is always at the pub opposite our house, so we have a grandstand view of hounds, horses and red coats. Dozens of people from the area congregate to watch and meet one another, then some go off afterwards to follow the hunt by car. The Fox hunting ban does not seem to have made any difference, although I don’t know how many foxes they caught in the past or what happens now.

This was followed closely by bonfire night, as I have said in a previous post, in Guiseley this was like living in a war zone for two or three nights depending on which day of the week the 5th fell. There were about half a dozen loud bangs in Glanton, and I saw a couple of fireworks burst in the night sky while I was out walking with Trixi but did not hear the corresponding bang.

Trixi has adapted well to the change of routine and country life. She particularly enjoys the longer walks we try to take on Neil’s days off. Again things are a little topsy turvy, in Guiseley we could walk into the country, here it is mainly road walks from the house and we have to go further a field for a more country walk through the hills. Luckily we don’t have to go far as Glanton is situated on the edge of the national park.

So what do I miss from the old life? The people mainly, the reading group I set up and reading in general. I no longer have the 20minute commute twice a day when I used to do most of my reading and although Neil still goes to bed before me I tend to spend my evenings chatting or watching TV with mum rather than reading.

Are we glad we made the move? yes

When I went out with Trixi last night, the full moon was flickering behind the clouds, there was a slight breeze and it was chilly. As I walked up towards the field I was amazed to see that the sheep, had settled themselves in a circle. There were no sheep outside the circle but there were some dotted within. This image made such an impression on me that when I got home I wrote:

Solid in their heavy fleece,
Discoloured by the wintry weather,
The sheep had settled
As if planted by ancient hands,
In henge formation,
Under the sway of the pregnant moon.

No sheep tonight – perhaps they were an apparition!!

At the Bay
Katherine Mansfield

I enjoyed reading this story, Katherine Mansfield captures the feeling of summer freedom so beautifully. The story is full of well observed details, from the encounter between Florrie the cat and the sheep dog to the inhabitants of the bay and their daily rituals to the physical nature of the place. I love the description of Lottie getting over the stile, I felt I was a secret observer, and you can just picture the 'exhausted-looking bathing-dresses and the rough striped towels' hanging over the veranda drying. She concentrates on individuals with the exception of the Samuel Josephs, but they are treated as a single organism working together, or possibly against each other. I was curious about the absence of Mrs Trout, there is no mention of her at all. All the children have individual characters and are given the same weight in the story as the adults.

As others have already commented, the story seems to be dealing with freedom or the perception of freedom. Freedom of childhood, of youth, widowhood and age. It is the parents who seem to have a raw deal, as they are aware that the freedom they are experiencing is short lived. Linda relaxed, for a short time alone in the garden escaping from the dread of having children. Jonathan Trout escaping for two weeks from the dreary office job, however his freedom continues because he can dream and plan for his great escape. Stanley caught in his own insecurities and Beryl waiting for life to begin. Short lived freedom can be very unsettling. All this is set against the daily changes in the landscape around them, the tide comes in and goes out, the sun rises and falls, how insignificant we really are. Is it about having the freedom to find our individual place in the natural world, or was she trying to capture a time from her past?From Kates posting it would appear that the story was special too her.

I must admit that I didn't feel the darkness of the story, but as I read I was waiting for something to happen.

It is a story that with live with me.

As a post script you may be interested to know that Persephone Books have just published a new edition of Katherine Mansfields Journal which includes a reprint of Virginia Woolf's 1927 review.

FireWorks

November 3rd and the house is surrounded by bangs, wizzes, shooshes and cracklings as people enjoy fireworks. Luckily Trixi is not too bothered by the bangs although she gets a bit spooked if she notices the lights. On our walk tonight I noticed that the sheep in the field we walk past were all on their feet and bunched together. They seemed to feel apprehensive about the loud and unusual noises.

I remember as a child being mesmerised by the Catherine wheels and roman candles, far tamer than the fireworks of today, they produced arks and fountains of coloured sparks. I used to try drawing them, one way I had was too cover a piece of paper in different coloured wax crayoning and then cover the whole piece in thick black paint. Once this was dry you could scrape off the black paint to reveal the colours underneath, like a scraper board. I never felt my efforts were satisfactory. I remember going to the village bonfire and having hot dogs and being well wrapped up. Communal bonfires seemed to be more popular, and we rarely had fireworks at home, although we were allowed sparklers. You could use them to write your name against the black sky.

At eleven I went away to boarding school, and we always had a big fire and spectacular fire works. Mr Ilife (froggy) the music teacher was always in charge of the fireworks. Baked potatoes wrapped in silver foil were cooked in the embers of the fire, one for everybody. It was always a good night, and I remember being in tears at the end of the night during my last year because it was the last firework night. It was the culmination of a fortnight of high excitement at school, which included the return to school from the half term break, and then we always had a Halloween party which was fancy dress followed by the fireworks on the Saturday nearest the 5th, a good start to the run up to Christmas. For Halloween the first year girls were given the job of hollowing out turnips, no pumpkins in those days, this task was done in the girls changing rooms and the smell of turnip lingered for weeks afterwards.

Since school I haven’t had much to do with fireworks, my last dog used to get terrified of any loud noises and since fireworks started to go off from the middle of October and continue well into November taking her for walks was a bit of a nightmare and I used to feel very stressed. In recent years though the letting off of fireworks appears to be concentrated to the weekend around the fifth.

Jane Eyre

'Charlotte Bronte's tale of an orphaned girl who becomes governess to a precocious child. Staring Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds'

Radio Times listing Tuesday 19 September

That might be what the film is about, but it is not what the book is about.

The Scarlet Shoes

I was standing on platform 2A at the gloomy end of the city train station the other evening at the end of a tedious day waiting for arrival of the 17:32 and thinking of nothing in particular, when a pair of scarlet shoes on the opposite platform grabbed my attention. It was like looking at one of those adverts where everything is presented in shades of muted grey except for the product being marketed. In this case the product was a pair of open toed, high heeled, slightly sparkling scarlet shoes. Apart from the striking colour and general style, so unusual for the time of day, the finer design points were lost over the distance of the two rail tracks, but what really drew my eye to them was the way they moved around. They could have been the red shoes of the fairy tale. They seemed not to stay in one position for more than a few seconds.
Of course they did not move around on their own. They fitted snugly around feet which were attached to a pair of shapely legs, a skirt that should have been 6cm longer, a mane of blond hair and a mobile phone.
A pair of toes faced me across the divide, one ankle wrapped around the other, then one shoe would fly into the air while the other did a neat pirouette and I would be looking at the heels both solidly planted on the ground hip distance apart ready for action. They would then turn to the right and take a few steps and then a few steps in the opposite direction. An extravagant knee high kick in the air, a twirl and the toes would be facing me again. It was like watching an aerobics exercise or line dancing. Ankles crossed and step to the right and turn and too the left and kick and twirl and ankles crossed and turn and forward and back and kick ...... Those shoes knew they were something special and they wanted to be noticed. I was transfixed for a good five minutes until my train arrived - on time and the shoes were blocked from view. I wish I had had my camera with me.