Wimseyfic, anti-Attenbury
Jan. 27th, 2011 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukBeing a short fic attempting to address just one of the many issues handled ham-fistedly by Jill Paton-Walsh in The Attenbury Emeralds.
*
Gerald was dead, and the world had changed. They had left a weeping Helen in the hands of her daughter and taken a taxi the short distance from the Mayfair house to Audley Square. Harriet had spoken to the boys’ schools and arranged for them to come a day early for half-term and the funeral, but she had at present no serious worries in that direction. Gerald had been a kindly uncle, but he belonged, in mind if not hitherto in body, to a generation dismissed in the minds of boys as old men. She found Peter writing letters at the little table in the drawing room. He looked up as she entered and she crossed the room to kiss his temple before retreating to the chair in front of the unseasonable fire.
‘Have you ordered tea?’
‘What? No, I didn’t think of it.’
‘Then let’s have some now; I’m starving, and you might drink something.’
‘All right.’ He turned back to his papers, and Harriet picked up her notebook. She had long since learned not to be wounded by Peter’s retreat into himself on these occasions. She recalled her mother-in-law’s words of long ago, he is still in there, and he did, in the end, always come back to her. The letters needed to be written, and he would be better for feeling useful. She sent the maid for tea and muffins, a pleasure once more with the end of butter rationing.
The heavy door opened to admit Bunter bearing a silver tray laden with the usual teapot and associated paraphernalia, and plates piled high with muffins and cucumber sandwiches. Harriet recalled belatedly that lunch had consisted of a single biscuit.
‘Thank you, Bunter,’ she said, feeling suddenly exhausted. Peter had not turned round. Bunter laid a hand on his shoulder, and bent his head to murmur something ending in, ‘tea, your grace.’
Peter sat up as if he had been bitten, turning a distraught face to his valet.
‘Oh no, Bunter! Not you, too.’
Harriet said nothing. She remembered once before when Bunter’s words had made something real, my lady, now gone forever. Now he stood as implacable as Jane’s Mr Brocklehurst, a straight black pillar with its face like a carved mask.
‘Your grace,’ the voice not unsympathetic, but softly insistent. There could be, she understood, no resistance to the overwhelming tide. Canute, poor misrepresented man, had known that. Though it was like Peter to fight against the waves nonetheless.
‘But not yet, surely?’
The curved lips of the mask understood, but were unmoving. The strong fingers on the shoulder distorted the grey flannel. Tomorrow, the cloth would be black and the hand at his side.
Peter yielded reluctantly, inevitably, ‘At least not at home.’ And then more quietly, ‘Bunter?’
Harriet, watching silently, saw something shift behind the mask. A struggle was taking place, something happening she had never quite seen before, and then the mask dropped and there was only a man standing there, looking frightened and exhilarated and as old as he was, the mouth gone soft and uncertain, only the dark eyes still shadowed. His hand dropped from Peter’s shoulder and Harriet saw the fingers stiffen and forced straight again. Bunter, drawing breath and fixing his eyes straight ahead, looked so like a little boy nerving himself to recite that she couldn’t help smiling. He let out a breath, dropped his gaze to meet Peter’s, and said in a voice that could not quite conceal its own daring:
‘Peter?’
*
Gerald was dead, and the world had changed. They had left a weeping Helen in the hands of her daughter and taken a taxi the short distance from the Mayfair house to Audley Square. Harriet had spoken to the boys’ schools and arranged for them to come a day early for half-term and the funeral, but she had at present no serious worries in that direction. Gerald had been a kindly uncle, but he belonged, in mind if not hitherto in body, to a generation dismissed in the minds of boys as old men. She found Peter writing letters at the little table in the drawing room. He looked up as she entered and she crossed the room to kiss his temple before retreating to the chair in front of the unseasonable fire.
‘Have you ordered tea?’
‘What? No, I didn’t think of it.’
‘Then let’s have some now; I’m starving, and you might drink something.’
‘All right.’ He turned back to his papers, and Harriet picked up her notebook. She had long since learned not to be wounded by Peter’s retreat into himself on these occasions. She recalled her mother-in-law’s words of long ago, he is still in there, and he did, in the end, always come back to her. The letters needed to be written, and he would be better for feeling useful. She sent the maid for tea and muffins, a pleasure once more with the end of butter rationing.
The heavy door opened to admit Bunter bearing a silver tray laden with the usual teapot and associated paraphernalia, and plates piled high with muffins and cucumber sandwiches. Harriet recalled belatedly that lunch had consisted of a single biscuit.
‘Thank you, Bunter,’ she said, feeling suddenly exhausted. Peter had not turned round. Bunter laid a hand on his shoulder, and bent his head to murmur something ending in, ‘tea, your grace.’
Peter sat up as if he had been bitten, turning a distraught face to his valet.
‘Oh no, Bunter! Not you, too.’
Harriet said nothing. She remembered once before when Bunter’s words had made something real, my lady, now gone forever. Now he stood as implacable as Jane’s Mr Brocklehurst, a straight black pillar with its face like a carved mask.
‘Your grace,’ the voice not unsympathetic, but softly insistent. There could be, she understood, no resistance to the overwhelming tide. Canute, poor misrepresented man, had known that. Though it was like Peter to fight against the waves nonetheless.
‘But not yet, surely?’
The curved lips of the mask understood, but were unmoving. The strong fingers on the shoulder distorted the grey flannel. Tomorrow, the cloth would be black and the hand at his side.
Peter yielded reluctantly, inevitably, ‘At least not at home.’ And then more quietly, ‘Bunter?’
Harriet, watching silently, saw something shift behind the mask. A struggle was taking place, something happening she had never quite seen before, and then the mask dropped and there was only a man standing there, looking frightened and exhilarated and as old as he was, the mouth gone soft and uncertain, only the dark eyes still shadowed. His hand dropped from Peter’s shoulder and Harriet saw the fingers stiffen and forced straight again. Bunter, drawing breath and fixing his eyes straight ahead, looked so like a little boy nerving himself to recite that she couldn’t help smiling. He let out a breath, dropped his gaze to meet Peter’s, and said in a voice that could not quite conceal its own daring:
‘Peter?’
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 07:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 09:29 pm (UTC)Whisky. Wine is not enough. Paint-stripper would also work.
Ed. Not to mention how bloody patronising the book is to Bunter on the subject, who is presented as a silly fuddy-duddy contrasted with forward-looking Peter and Harriet.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 12:56 pm (UTC)From personal experience, there's often the option of not actually addressing the distinguished personage at all, and merely offering thanks for catching the naughty lambs, followed by a comment on the lovely weather and/or the state of the other 4,500 wooly creatures.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 10:05 am (UTC)And as Harriet herself is already a pale shadow of Harriet, it's no wonder that Hope Bunter really does come across as someone whose sole function is to be Bunter's beard.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 07:52 pm (UTC)But .... if not quite fair, this is far more truth than "Mervyn" from the younger generation.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 09:20 pm (UTC)I think there were lots of ways that JPW could have addressed the names, the class issues, Peter going to inherit etc. She's not a poor writer - far from it - but she does handle them poorly in TAE.
*Were there any? I haven't heard it, but I wasn't interested in the subject when T,D was being written.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-27 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-12 07:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-12 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:23 am (UTC)Some things should be left alone :(
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:47 pm (UTC)Some things should be left alone :(
If they were unauthorised versions, I wouldn't mind - indeed I'd be glad to see them out there. It's the stamp of authority on something so much inferior, that also prevents access to the original material, that infuriates me.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 10:02 am (UTC)Having said that, it's a really, really good take on how things might have gone, and gives due weight to the enormity of the shift.
I suppose part of my difficulty is that I don't think that the later Peter, as drawn by DLS, would actually have had any strong objection to assuming the dukedom. He is, as Harriet observes, reverting to type, and he leaves his own estate entailed. He's overcome his psychological difficulties with bearing responsibility, has got an awful lot keener on life in the countryside, has developed a new fondess and respect for family traditions (as evinced by the way he introduces Harriet to Duke's Denver) and is generally prepared to embody "England" - or at least the establishment parts of it - in a way that he wasn't when he was still young and vulnerable and needed his silly ass persona. In fact, the whole "ZOMG! Bunter must now call Peter your grace!" crisis seems to me a non-issue, that is only turned into one because JPW doesn't like the use of honorifics and Peter becvoming a Duke makes it harder, rather than easier, to just dump them.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 11:03 am (UTC)I can contemplate a shift to a more informal relationship after Bunter retires, say at 70-ish, to a cottage or a flat of his own at Duke’s Denver. But it needs the change in the power relationship first.
The whole book is a series of one non-issue crisis after another. It's Gerald I feel sorry for.
(so perhaps their pet names for each other, when cavorting in non-canonical fashion, are in fact Major and Sarge...)
I think I am going to have to follow DLS on this and employ the intense use of "you".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 11:20 am (UTC)Yes! Exactly! All this pretending the power relationship doesn't exist doesn't get anyone anywhere. The problem isn't that Peter doesn't call Bunter Mervyn, it's that he pays the man to do all the things he doesn't want to have to do for himself. You don't ask friends to clean up after you and cook your meals (or if you do, they don't stay friends for long). No amount of abandoning the honorifics is going to change the fact that their relationship is based on a fundamental economic and social inequality. As you say, the very fact that there's more going on beneath the surface makes patrolling the boundaries essential.
I mean, I would happily read fic in which the revolution comes and Bunter is made Chairman of The People's Committee For Dismantling the Class System and he and Peter find their respective social statuses reversed, or evened out, or whatever, but I don't want to read a story in which the implications of the class system are fudged by everyone pretending there isn't any real difference between the two of them, while all the time secretly thinking it's so awful to be a servant that they'd better behave as if Bunter wasn't one.
I don't feel sorry for Gerald. I think DLS (and JPW, come to that) let him off altogether too lightly. They cut him slack that they don't cut Helen (who at least doesn't screw around), and are far too willing to take his fondness for Peter (which he almost never acts upon) as indicative of being fundamentally decent and worthy of forgiveness for being an over-privileged ass and parasite. But I do think he deserved a bit more screen time - maybe even an actual death scene - rather than being offed abruptly solely to make Peter Duke.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:10 pm (UTC)Actually, DLS’s treatment of Gerald (and to some extent JPW's of Peter) reminds me rather of the portrayal of the Earl in Downton Abbey, being fundamentally the idealised Old Tory – yes, he’s a bit out of touch in some ways, but ultimately he’s got the right ideas and will look after everyone, just as long as they accept their rules and don’t get above themselves. An attitude of which both DLS and Julian Fellowes naturally approve. DLS’s Helen I don’t mind – she’s fundamentally a comic character, but she’s not significantly worse than other awkward characters. Walsh’s, though, is a completely malign bitch (a phenomenon also evident on the List where people proclaim on no evidence whatsoever that she doesn’t love her children at all) in a way that just feels like personal viciousness on the part of the author.
The character I want to see after the Revolution is Jeeves - after all, the only reason there hasn't been one is that Jeeves prefers the easy life to being Dictator.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:33 pm (UTC)Gerald is definitely Old Tory, you've hit the nail on the head there. And while DLS clearly dislikes Helen, she imagines her vividly enough that you catch glimpses of the unhappy person underneath the nastiness - plus, of course, she's very entertainingly nasty. Neither of which can be said of JPW's Helen, who is a hatchet job. But then none of her versions of the characters are entertaining. I have huge sympathy with the person on the list whose husband found the book too dull to get through.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-29 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-02 03:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:53 pm (UTC)I have been trying to avoid ATT by sticking my fingers in my ears and going la la la but I do like Harriet's reflections on the loss of "my lady".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 01:34 pm (UTC)In a nutshell, that's why they didn't let the cleaners-up and cookers divorce their husbands.
If it's really necessary to call His Grace something other than His Grace (Bunter seems able to cope with "my lord"--you'd DIE if you took a drink every time he says that in "Unnatural Death") there's always "Mr. Palliser" in terms of people who don't think they want to be Dukes.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:38 pm (UTC)you'd DIE if you took a drink every time he says that in "Unnatural Death"
The Wimseyverse drinking game would have to involve some sort of cribbage board so you only had to drink on every fifth "my lord". But I'm sure in the non-JPW verse it would take Bunter about five minutes to learn to inject "your grace" with the subtle inflections already applied in "my lord" from "if you insist, you moron" to "your arse looks very fine in those pyjamas".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 02:28 pm (UTC)Particularly given that in GN he tells St George he might actually be better at it than St George would. And St George's use of it as a threat is only "no more Vienese singers", not that it would be the end of the world. I can see a bit of responsibility angst though, and survivor guilt maybe, but I don't know how Gerald gets bumped off. Nor do I know how disastrous JPW thinks getting the Dukedom is. I shouldn't be commenting at all really.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:28 pm (UTC)It has suddenly struck me that if St. George really believes this, he must have a rather rose-coloured view of his own father. Perhaps post-Clouds he got more discreet.
Gerald gets bumped off by a heart attack in the burning down of Bredon Hall (don't worry about spoilers, the dramatic effect is zero). Peter and Harriet naturally rise to the occasion, despite doing the tax calculations on the back of an envelope, and turning the old house into a barn conversion.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:48 pm (UTC)Now I have looked it up, it is when he bumps into Harriet and the first thing St George threatens to land Uncle Peter with by killing himself is "The balm, the sceptre and the ball. Four rows of moth-eaten ermine. To say nothing of that dashed great barracks down at Denver eating its mouldy head off". Then he says if Peter is going to risk his life chasing criminals, he'll have to get married "No more bachelor freedom with old Bunter in a Picadilly flat. And no more spectacular Viennese singers. So you see, it's as much as his life's worth to let anything happen to me."
It's not a very coherent argument and it seems to be the marriage for the sake of the succession that would stop the spectacular mistresses, rather than the Dukedom as such.
So yes, are we supposed to assume St George know about his uncle's women and not his father's? Or does the "I was a kid at school" imply that Viennese singers were much discussed at Eton?
Lend Me a Tenor
Date: 2011-01-28 05:33 pm (UTC)I believe this also admits of the interpretation, "No more singers, because Bunter put his foot down, after all, it's his flat too."
Re: Lend Me a Tenor
Date: 2011-01-28 06:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 03:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-28 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 09:52 am (UTC)I won't read JPW's books because Jerry doesn't die. No, sir!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 03:44 pm (UTC)Help Me Obi-Wan Flist
Date: 2011-02-03 03:47 pm (UTC)Re: Help Me Obi-Wan Flist
Date: 2011-02-03 04:02 pm (UTC)Re: Help Me Obi-Wan Flist
Date: 2011-02-03 04:14 pm (UTC)The night before last I was sleep-writing the Downton Abbey story, so after I woke I pounded out 500 words--I think it'll be about 5,000 when it's done.