Cricket Term, chapters 10-12

[coughingbear]

The final section of the book - the Play, the Match, and the End. Just about in time, but my apologies that it's so late; long day at work and trouble with laptop.

Comments

[nnozomi]

I am always tickled by Miss Cromwell's phrasing to Nicola: something like "Miss Keith saw fit to tell me..." which suggests, to me, that Miss Cromwell feels the information flow between headmistress and staff is not all it might be.
Tangent to follow, fair warning: I am very fond of Miss Cromwell as a character--I think she'd have reduced me to indignant tears when I was Lower Fourth age, but I would have loved her as an older teenager. And I like the way she seems to enjoy Miranda's cheeky remarks rather than squashing them. (On Miranda's part, this reminds me of Miss Pym's take on Beau Nash, as someone whose well-to-do family background moves to speak to her form mistress as an equal.) I had a professor in grad school who was even fiercer, or at any rate more explosive, than Miss Cromwell, but who loved it on the rare occasions when someone got up the nerve to talk back (assuming that the backtalk was accompanied by proper preparation)... .

Wouldn't somebody like to write a fic showing Cricket Term from the point of view of the

[nnozomi]

Interesting that Miss Cromwell has immediately worked out the timing of it all - that Miss Keith said that one of the girls would have to leave because of financial problems, and Miss Cromwell has figured out that there must have been a letter telling Nicola that she was the one (or at least, telling Nicola about the problems - maybe she wondered why Lawrie wasn't also told, or if she was, why she wasn't making a huha about the possibility, if they were keeping it general about one of them needing to leave but not who). I wonder when Miss Keith said all this (in discussion about the Prosser perhaps? Did they ever really consider Nicola for that? Did they know it was Nicola who was worried about leaving - or just that one of them might, so giving it to Lawrie was, to them, just as good a solution?). I didn't think any of the staff knew that it was Nicola who'd been chosen to leave. I got the feeling that the discussion with Miss Keith must have been quite a while after the missed lesson, so making the connection between it all is

[ext_195770]

I suspect that Miss Cromwell is fully aware that if Lawrie had been told she were the one to leave, everyone would have heard about it.

[fengirl88]

SO TRUE.

[nnozomi]

absolutely - which makes me wonder if the staff either thought Mrs Marlow hadn't specified which girl and told only Nicola about the possibilities, or whether she had told Nicola specifically it was to be her. And if they knew she had told Nicola specifically, why they didn't go out of their way to give her the Prosser, given that they had just as much of an excuse to do it (the flukey form prize vs the flimsy interpretation of maturity of giving up Ariel)

-res23

[colne_dsr]

The Kingscote staff are presumably equally aware that it doesn't matter which twin gets the Prosser, as far as keeping both at school goes. And could they justify giving it Nicola? Top of the class by a fluke, having been persistently behind Meg Hopkins; doesn't work as hard as Meg Hopkins; comes from a much richer family, 8 children, 6 boarders, 2 at Dartmouth (or were), compared with Meg's presumed bog standard house in Wade and parents scrimping to pay day school fees.

There are few arguments to give Nicola the Prosser. There are valid arguments to give it Lawrie. (With potential that when Lawrie makes it big, she might top up the scholarship fund by way of repayment!)

[nineveh_uk]

Put like that, Lawrie does make a more compelling argument (especially when you add the inheriting-from-Karen part). I'm going to propose an extra point in her favour - that it is in fact Lawrie the school actively wants to keep, because they see in her potential to be a Famous Old Girl, and if Nicola leaves and tells Lawrie about the good time that she's having at Colebridge Grammar, there is a chance that Lawrie will insist on leaving for the sixth form...

[the_antichris]

Maybe she's remembering End of Term and suspects Lawrie has another bargain with Them...

(On the subject of Them, I wonder if Miss Cromwell suspected why Lawrie was so 'maturely' giving up Ariel? And kept quiet for Nicola's sake?)

Miss Cromwell Insight into Nicola's AWOL

[mainerobin]

I'd gathered that during morning break that day Miss Keith had asked Miss Cromwell about the huha of her class wandering the grounds. And Crommie had answered that Nicola Marlow, most uncharacteristically had been AWOL for Miss Hellier's class. Keith may then have said "Mmn, I wonder. Mrs. Marlow and I have been in conversation about the increase in school fees next term. She told me that she'd very likely to withdraw one of the girls until Ann was finished

[occasionalhope]

I definitely read the hypothetical bit on the roof, about what Miss Cromwell would have said about Nicola's academic abilities, as what she actually did say to Keith a bit later.

[mrs_redboots]

If not to the entire staff room!

[nnozomi]

I don't know--my headcanon on this one differs, I think. I imagine Miss Cromwell as more likely to prefer the hands-on, as it were, job of maths teacher (sorry, Ginty, staff) and form mistress; I think she would get less of a charge out of the administrative, publicity-type, and (probably) fund-raising work of being headmistress.
I do think (and this is probably STRONGLY affected by having taught at a private partly-boarding school where the principal, to use completely non-Forestian language, had his head up his wazoo) that Miss Cromwell among other staff would prefer less headmistressly interference (in things like selections for plays and teams) and more freedom of information. But we don't really have enough information to judge, sadly.

[nnozomi]

Yes, I entirely agree that she's irritated by Miss Keith's performance as headmistress. I have a feeling that a lot of the staff's odder habits can be ascribed to long-term survival strategies under the Keithian regime--survival as in "keeping their sanity and their interest in the job" as opposed to remaining employed.
((very nearly literal) magnetism, very nice...)

[buntyandjinx]

on Crommie, my favourite phrase in the whole canon is "she saw an Unstrange shape coming towards her".