Mainly The Charioteer

The Charioteer, Mary Renault, her neglected modern novels, and historical and literary landscape. I also have an EF Benson sideblog @fredbensonenthusiast. Profile pic Alec and Ralph by Lux. Background painting Ivan Aivazovsky.

[renaultphile]

Mary Renault and Julie Mullard

Tumblr TC best bits and longer posts are on my Wordpress blog celebrating The Charioteer

My TC fics are here

On this blog you will find numerous posts and conversations about Mary Renault, vast amounts of material on The Charioteer, some posts on her other novels, discussions about issues that might have interested her, along with a variety of related and unrelated posting.

For all things E.F. Benson, my sideblog is here.

[cinnamonsweater]

"It would have been just my word against Bunny's, and he was in then and I was out...": ralph believing bunny over alec

one of the most interesting aspects of the novel to think about is the relationship between ralph and alec during the book. they obviously both still cared a lot about each other, but ralph spent the majority of the book angry with alec. how close were they, really, after ralph "pitched up again"? there seemed to be some underlying tension, even before the bim incident happened. the incident in question:

Laurie thought he had seldom heard a more pointless joke… he couldn't see why Alec should look so embarrassed about it. "Perhaps," said Bim, "I should have said, 'Not the late Odell?' Well, better late than never, obviously." The feeling of a dense atmospheric pressure caused Laurie to look around. He saw that Ralph was staring silently, not at Bim but at Alec. Alec opened his mouth to speak, but didn't say anything. There was something pent and helpless about him, though he had not dropped his eyes. Laurie supposed that he must have been gossiping to Bim on the landing before he came in. Ralph's look of shocked contempt was a little excessive…

alec was about to defend himself, but suddenly cut himself off. later he said to laurie:

"So just now my name's mud, which isn't enjoyable, especially as I can do damn-all about it…"

the logical and accepted reason he was able to do damn-all about it was that if bunny knew alec told ralph, bunny would blackmail him, and tell sandy about his affairs. but i have a few questions/comments:

it's possible that at this point, alec didn't know bunny was behind it, he only knew that he wasn't the one going around telling everyone about laurie.

@renaultphile mentioned that ralph might have so confidently assumed alec did it just because there wasn't any other explanation that made sense to him (just like laurie would later believe andrew over ralph because no other explanation makes sense to him). maybe alec was just as confused as to how the info about laurie could come out, and was only able to put it together once toto went to him about the andrew thing.

after all, he didn't know what exactly ralph had been writing about. he wasn't even sure that ralph had a diary at the moment:

"The bits he used to show me were just travel stuff, but he always hovered rather, ready to grab it back again, so I assumed he'd committed his soul to it here and there… if he began another in hospital, God knows what he put in that."

there's this part immediately after ralph left to take bim home:

He had better ask Alec where the nearest telephone was; but Alec was talking to Sandy in a corner and it looked as though they were having words.

maybe alec was just telling/arguing with sandy about how he ("promised Ralph I'd look after you specially while he was gone."). but i'm wondering if maybe alec thinks sandy had something to do with the bim thing. in the scene where sandy invited laurie to the party, he didn't react any particular way to hearing laurie's last name (the only name ralph would have referred to him as in his diary and to alec) or attached any significance to laurie's reaction to hearing lanyon's name, so it's pretty safe to say that alec didn't tell him anything about laurie.

but after alec met laurie and learned his last name, he excused himself and immediately went to sandy:

He collected someone's glass and went over to the table with it, catching Sandy's eye on the way. They met at the table and went through some business with a siphon, and talked discreetly. Laurie heard nothing except the end of a sentence from Sandy: "…started out long ago. Does it matter?"

alec probably told him a little bit about 'the odell' during this conversation to explain why he would want to give ralph a heads up about laurie being at the party. sandy didn't realize the significance up to this point (evidently, he didn't even bother telling alec who laurie was, other than a 'friend of ralph's; alec had to make sure he wasn't hazell), but once ralph showed up sandy presented laurie as this big surprise for him. maybe alec was 'having words' with sandy after the bim thing to ask if he was the one who was gossiping out on the stairs.

there's also this bit:

"I know just what he did, the little sod… I know, because I've carried the can for him before now. Either he's been reading you letters, if you've written Ralph any, or he's been at his diary again. I know he reads it because once Bim came out with something at a party…"

alec only giving the one example of how he knew what bunny did makes me think that there was no precedence of him reading ralph's diaries. it seems to be the bim scene alone that made alec come to that conclusion. how likely was alec to come to it in the middle of a party, probably tipsy/drunk at that point, with little time to think, given that he had to babysit laurie and then babysit sandy, if bunny had never done something like that before (at least to the knowledge of anyone)? it would probably have taken him a while to put it together.

---

now let's say he does know it was bunny.

why didn't he tell the truth, while also letting ralph know that bunny would blackmail him if he found out alec said anything? surely ralph could have found some way of confronting bunny about it without incriminating alec. he could have pretended to have deduced it himself, or baited bunny and caught him in the act. he was able to "trip bunny up" into admitting he impersonated him, so why not get him to admit to reading the diaries?

i can think of a few reasons why alec might have stayed silent:

"It would have been just my word against Bunny's, and he was in then and I was out…"

could ralph and alec's relationship have been so strained that ralph would have automatically believed bunny over alec? there are a few other bits that suggest some tension between them:

"…but I mind more about Ralph, really. Not that I'm anything much now, of course…"

"he trusted me in those days, even after we'd split."

"He's lived a year with Alec and still hasn't cottoned on to his-- his fanatical claustrophobia… Some things about him don't alter, much as he's changed." The bitterness he had kept out of his voice seemed to thread itself under Laurie's skin.

"I went because I was on the town, like everyone else in the room. Yes, that includes Alec too, you don't know as much about Alec as you think."

why wouldn't ralph trust alec now, when he trusted him enough to leave his papers with him even after they broke up? did alec somehow betray ralph's trust in the time between his "pitching back up again" and the party that now ralph believed anyone else's word against his?

maybe it had to do more with how much alec had "changed," according to ralph. he did express a lot of bitterness over alec's relationship with sandy and his association with sandy's friends:

Ralph said, "Alec's a fool to let Sandy bring people like that here."

Sandy came up just then and said, "Hello, Ralph, your very favorite person came and you missed him." "Oh?" said Ralph, in a very even, colorless voice. He looked at Sandy, who began suddenly to rattle away at his little story so fast that it was quite ruined. Ralph have a laugh which, though irritable, was also relieved. "I wonder why Alec always maintain he's so kind-hearted."

"No," said Ralph. He pushed Alec on one side, not unkindly but with finality. "Listen to me. How much more responsibility do you expect Alec to take for you, you fish-bellied, blackmailing little crap?"

"This will have taught Sandy a lesson, anyway." As if nothing had happened Ralph said, "That's what I thought the first time. Oh, yes, and he gave Alec his solemn word of honor not to do it again. […] He was all alone that time, laboring away with emetics and things and nearly going mental. He goes through torments of remorse afterwards. Alec, I mean; not Sandy, of course."

"I really don't think one should be expected to meet his friends; if Alec wants to put up with them himself, it's his business. I never go there now without wondering whether they'll start turning up in drag."

Ralph stirred, in what seemed a sudden uncontrollable annoyance. "Well, for Christ's sake, don't let's make blasted ostriches of ourselves. Anyone would think, to hear you and Alec talk, that being normal was immaterial, like whether you like your eggs scrambled or friend."

ralph was probably shocked to come back and find alec with someone like sandy (as alec wondered: "Do you think it funny that a person who's been attracted by Ralph should also be attracted by Sandy?"). and each time he went to one of the parties and met more of the people sandy invited it solidified even more in ralph's mind how much alec had changed; how much more he had been involving himself in that sordid world. maybe ralph wasn't as close to him or didn't tell him things anymore because of the kind of people alec hung out with, and the thought that alec might have been one of them now. maybe he had a similar mindset to laurie in ch.14, that someone being a 'practicing' queer automatically meant they were going to talk behind your back and cause drama, or at least be more prone to doing so.

i do have a hc about alec cheating on ralph throughout their relationship: i imagine that ralph found out about it early on (his comment "He's lived a year with Alec and still hasn't cottoned on to his-- his fanatical claustrophobia." suggests that it took ralph quite less than a year to cotton on himself), but was pragmatic about it. he would have been gone most of the time, being in the merchant navy, so it's only natural for alec to look elsewhere. after all, ralph was "not a romantic" (ok…) so why would he kick up a fuss about it? but i think it did hurt him, at least subconsciously. he obviously wanted to settle down with someone (he lived with bunny, and wanted to live with laurie) and he even started looking for a job ashore. i wonder if part of that decision was the hope that in being home more often, alec wouldn't feel the need to turn to other people. they broke up for a bunch of other reasons, but i wonder how big a part the cheating played in that decision.

so maybe part of ralph's mistrust is some leftover resentment about that, especially since alec was still doing it?

either way, if it was alec's word against bunny's and ralph is more inclined to believe bunny for whatever reason, he might have questioned bunny about it, incriminating alec (intentionally or not; if alec's the only other one of their set who even knew, through living with him, that ralph kept a diary, bunny might have been able to deduce that he was the one who ratted), and caused bunny to have revealed alec's secrets to sandy.

there's also the possibility that bunny not only had dirt to tell sandy, but also some to tell ralph. ralph wouldn't have cared if alec was sleeping with a dozen people while with sandy. he knew alec was a cheater already (and was probably part of that dozen himself, if you subscribe to the theory that he and alec hooked up after getting back in touch) and they weren't together anymore; it wasn't his business.

but what if alec also slept with bunny while bunny was with ralph? ralph would obviously break up with bunny for his reading the diaries, so bunny wouldn't have had anything to lose by revealing he'd slept with alec. that alec slept with ralph's boyfriend behind his back would have felt like a betrayal (no matter that ralph was probably cheating on bunny, too. even if he suspected bunny of being unfaithful the whole time anyway, it's not the fact he cheated, it was that he was doing it with the person closest to ralph at that point). if ralph was already wary of alec, one more betrayal may have been enough to have damaged their relationship for good.

these bits are interesting to view through that lens. alec seems to have been walking on eggshells to stay on bunny's good side:

"As for Alec, one would have supposed that he and Bunny were the best of friends."

[responding to Bunny] "He thinks untrained people should mind their own-- business, don't you, Alec?" […] Alec didn't rise to it. He had brownish eyelids with long dark lashes, under which his eyes slid around to look at Bunny for a moment. He spoke however to Ralph, with pleasant detachment."

of course if bunny had any blackmail material on him at all, whether they cheated together or not, he would have been wise to stay neutral.

another reason why he might not have wanted to tell ralph the truth: he didn't want ralph to break up with bunny. i can see this one playing a part whether ralph would have believed alec or not.

hear me out! obviously alec didn't think bunny was right for ralph:

"No, I see now the only kind of person who'd offer him some hope of happiness would be someone up to his own strength with the continual patience to go on concealing it. Or, of course, the modesty not to know it, which would mean an innocence comparable in its way with his own." Laurie, who disliked to feel himself slipping, had been determined to follow every word of this. He opened his heavy eyes. "Like Bunny?" he said. "What?" "This friend of his. Bunny, isn't it, he said?" "Oh, dear God. Make yourself comfortable, my dear. Lie down properly and put your feet up; that's the way. I'm not going to bother you any more."

but he knew that ralph was at his lowest ebb:

"it's just that so many of Ralph's things have gone"

and although laurie clearly gave him some hope for ralph, he didn't know if he was even going to stick around. and whether ralph and bunny's relationship was a happy/stable one or not (more thoughts on that here, here, and here), i think bunny was something of a life-raft for ralph at that point, and alec recognized that. he didn't want to be the cause of that going, too.

---

so, no matter the reason, alec didn't tell ralph the truth, and ralph 100% believed alec to be guilty ("He seemed to be worried about something you thought he'd done and he thought he hadn't. I'm afraid I was rather drunk at the time; I don't think he said what it was." "He knows what he's done. It's not worth talking about."). and to make things worse, alec never "fessed up." alec having denied the accusations, or at least never having owned up to them must have felt like an extra snub to ralph. he was cold to alec the rest of the book (until his letter):

"I ran into Ralph for a minute today, just after he left you here… I didn't keep him. He was looking incandescent and elevated, like a candle burning at both ends. […] He hasn't been talking. But I know him pretty well."

i'm sure the last thing ralph wanted was to tell alec anything whatsoever about his relationship with laurie. i wonder if laurie ever told ralph about alec visiting him in the ward. i'd wager not, since it was extremely embarrassing for laurie, but i bet ralph would have been pissed at alec's meddling. i hope he made a proper apology to alec in person after the book ended.

[renaultphile]

This is so great, there's nothing I like better than speculating about Alec and Ralph! I love the idea that Alec hadn't quite worked it out, but sort of made out to Laurie that he knew instantly! Oh, maybe Ralph does the same in his letter when he says 'I knew it was Bunny'. He probably didn't know, just suspected.

And on to Alec feeling helpless......I wonder if that remark about 'carrying the world' suggests that Alec has somehow grown up and moved on, and takes a pragmatic view of life, 'using the network', being with Sandy who is flawed but still makes a good companion, and it feels like Ralph wants to be that person but is still caught up in his past, torturing himself over it, feeling 'responsible'. He barely sees Alec, Alec is just getting on with his life working for his finals so he can have a career, but Ralph is drifting, with nothing to do except ruminate.......

And Ralph and Bunny, i completely agree, Bunny is a kind of life-raft. Whatever is contributing to the Alec/Ralph rift, I feel sure that Ralph really does not understand what Bunny is up to. Their relationship doesn't feel like some turbulent passionate love affair, it feels like an OK marriage that Ralph is bored of. But Bunny puts up with his frequent bouts of drunkeness (he is used to taking the cigarette out of his hand?) and gives him the stability of being able to say he has a 'boyfriend'. I don't think Ralph thinks of him as this awful person, he's more like a trophy wife, and, like a wife, in those days you didn't expect to have lengthy philosophical discussions. He's just an extension of the two years of women in that respect 😮

So, in the end I believe Alec when he says Ralph wouldn't believe him. Ralph's never given Bunny the straight look, he hides away in his little attic room and gives Bunny free reign downstairs. He doesn't even seem that bothered about being baited by him. Alec's best bet is to lie low and do what he can from the sidelines......thank God it works!

[priorybear]

Mary Renault, The Charioteer.

[renaultphile]

Any novel you'd recommend to start with?

Hi there, I suppose I would have to say start with 'The Charioteer', although I also hugely admire the Greek novels, I feel that in a way she peaked as a novelist with this, and it was the link between her contemporary and Greek ones. Did you mean what other contemporary ones to read after ''The Charioteer'? If you give me an idea of what you like about her writing I can definitely make some suggestons......

[animo-et-corpore]

soo fun when renault’s mc has a complicated rivalry with his father and something oedipal with his mother. it’s like artist including their greatest hit remix in every new album

[renaultphile]

Fandom: The Charioteer - Mary Renault, RENAULT Mary - Works Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alec Deacon/Ralph Lanyon, Ralph Lanyon/Laurie Odell, Alec Deacon & Ralph Lanyon Characters: Alec Deacon, Ralph Lanyon Additional Tags: Letter, suicide note, Failed Suicide Attempt, Missing Scene, What if Ralph had written a letter to Alec Summary:  “If you should see Alec, will you tell him I owe him an apology? He will know what I mean.”

Ralph and Alec had an understanding about suicide notes. But when it came to the last he had already broken so many promises, one more couldn’t do any harm.

[renaultphile]

"you smelt worse than the others because your wound was going bad. I suppose you stood to me for something or other."

On the back of the Odyssey references, this does make me think of Philoctetes. Philoctetes was wounded at Troy and his wound smelt so bad the Greeks dumped him on a desert island. But they were told by the Gods that they would never win unless they brought him back. Sophocles' play is about the Greeks (mainly Odysseus) persuading him to come back and help them win the war.

On the ship, Ralph is called to see if Laurie is dead because they want to throw him over the side because he smells so bad.

It doesn't quite match, but the theme of healing and reintegrating into society after huge trauma does seem to be there.....the poison discharged on the staircase.

Could it be that Laurie symbolises a person in Ralph's past that he needs to integrate into his life before he can move on?

[j2parman]

“One should write as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerely putting on paper that which he saw and experienced, loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.”

— Neal Cassady, writing to Jack Kerouac in December 1947, quoted by Thomas Powers, “Mad to Be Saved,” a review of Joyce Johnson, The Voice Is All, Viking, 2012, London Review of Books, 25 October 2012, page 5.

[cinnamonsweater]

if ch.12 (the wedding) is a pessimistic, distorted version of the odyssey (penelope=lucy, antinous=straike, argos=gyp, the house is already packed up and laurie's stuff is in disarray from his aunt going through it, etc.).. does that make ralph athena? 🧐

[renaultphile]

Oh that's so sweet! But also if he is Odysseus he is the father figure to Laurie, isn't he? And think about his outrageous flirting with Aunt Olive! And Lucy clearly likes him.....

[embrethil]

WIP Wednesday!

He can even hear it from here, across the valley. The wind is streaming in from the grey sea, strong enough to be bracing, cut with a sharp sense of snow. It moans through the crevices of the barren rocks, carrying Johnson's infernal wailing across the open Arctic landscape. Carefully Ralph sets his hand lens on his knapsack and sighs. He'd been so careful to avoid this. Knowing they'd be weeks in each other's company, Ralph had spent the entire lent term interviewing hopeful undergraduates, assessing their personalities as much as their geological knowledge. And yet, every year without fail, one of the chosen few would wait until they were already on site to reveal some hitherto unsuspected "skill".

[cinnamonsweater]

“Would you, Spud?” Ralph’s face had softened; there was a kind of respect in it too. “After all those years. Yes; I expect you would.”

@skicio-zeezee @renaultphile

discussion continued!

i think ralph does believe him. but tbh the scenario that ralph gives laurie is pretty much what happened, except laurie didn’t know what a queer party was like and he evidently wasn’t “happy and satisfied.” 

he only went to the party to see ralph and he wanted to see ralph because he admired him (plus more?) at school and ralph made a huge impact on his life:

If it hadn’t been for him I might have fallen for all that, and missed this. I wish I could thank him.

He remembered how after Charles’s party, leaning out of his window long into the night, he had thought of Ralph; though it was already years since their brief meeting, the thought had supported him in his isolation.

...Ralph’s face at nineteen. In the dream there had always been a pause in which he had looked up and said, “Next time you go away, I’m going with you”; and Ralph, who hadn’t had a first name in those days, had looked down all the same and answered, “Of course.”

On a stricken field littered with the abandoned trophies of his lifetime, he remembered a victory which had once seemed beyond the furthest reach of the most secret aspiration. But he only said to himself that he must have someone to talk to.

and ralph knows that laurie liked him back then (in some form):

“Look, if you want to know, one reason why not is because it would mean too much. To me, too, if that’s any satisfaction to you. Anyway, no. Too much responsibility.”

but the degree of laurie’s hero-worship of ralph really sinks in for him in ch.9.

when ralph makes his jaded ‘he’ll come back and tell you about his boyfriend’ comment, laurie is shocked that ralph is basically disregarding the very values that he passed down to him (despite ralph saying they were a myth from the start; and it’s not like laurie forgot about him saying that:)

'Oddly enough, what I feel most is relief, because I know now that what kept me fighting it so long was the fear that what I was looking for didn’t exist. Lanyon said it didn’t, and after meeting Charles’s set I thought he was probably right.'

but laurie is still so disappointed by ralph making the same point he made seven years ago:

“Once you wouldn’t have talked like that.” 

ralph knows that in reality he’s fallen far beneath the pedestal laurie’s placed him on, even back then:

“You must have given me the benefit of every conceivable doubt.”

and he knows that his affair with hazell didn’t align with the principles in the phaedrus:

“I realized afterwards, some time afterwards…, That was what I had against him. I’d been trying to work up what I was into a kind of religion. I thought I could make out that way. He made me see it as just a part of what he was.”

at least i think that’s what he means... he thought (or at least told himself) he was genuinely helping hazell:

“Anyway, there he was, and one had to use a bit of discretion. Then this began, and at first one seemed to be helping him find his feet and really making something of him. I suppose some of that might even have been genuine.”

“He leaned toward the Old Vic in those days; he used to hint sometimes that I’d saved his genius from being pushed over the thin line into madness. Can you imagine me falling for that?”

“It wasn’t everybody one felt justified in taking a chance with. Side-tracking them, or something, perhaps; one couldn’t know.”

but the final incident with hazell makes ralph realize that their relationship was never about bettering each other, it was about sex. but i’m not confident about this interpretation. i would love to know what everyone else thinks about "I'd been trying to work up what I was into a kind of religion"!

the thought of ralph ever having been the perfect idol that laurie imagines is laughable to him: 

Ralph looked at him across the table. For one extraordinary second he seemed about to throw back his head and laugh. "Wouldn’t I? Well, in the meantime I’ve been around."

laurie is so thrown off by this that he disassociates for a moment, only snapping out of it when ralph touches him. then:

“Oh, come, be your age. For God’s sake, what does it matter to you what I meant?” “It does, that’s all. I can’t imagine there ever being a time when it wouldn’t.” There was a little silence, then Ralph said, quite quietly and simply, “Of course I didn’t mean it. It was just a line of talk. Forget all about it.”

the “be your age” makes me feel like he’s trying to say “you’re not 16 anymore and i’m not your head of house!” then laurie reveals to ralph the extent of his regard for him. i always wonder if this admission ralph a bit? he’s suddenly confronted with laurie’s grand perception of him and now the only thing he can do is attempt to live up to it, which is impossible. he knows he’s not that person and has never been that person. he takes back what he said and then plays the mentor role expected of him, making himself useful and comforting/distracting laurie the rest of the evening. this feels like a panic response to me. 

so when he says “After all those years. Yes; I expect you would,” i think he’s thinking of the hero-worship. even if laurie knew what a queer party was like, and was 100% committed to being celibate, he would go see ralph because he always gave ralph the benefit of every conceivable doubt. i imagine ralph says this with a bit of sadness… 

what do you guys think!

[renaultphile]

I love how you have laid this all out, it is such a strong thread of the book, that whole theme of meeting your heroes and discovering they are less than perfect.

A couple of thoughts -

With Hazell, and 'working it up to a religion', there was a kind of misogynistic view of some gay men at the time (of course they wouldn't have called themselves gay) that their love was actually superior to heterosexual love because it didn't involve a woman, and there was also the platonic notion (exemplified by Clive in 'Maurice') that said 'look but don't touch' and saw this is a higher plane of love than marriage to a woman. So it seems plausible Ralph might have sought compensation in this thought and tried to follow that code.

But Hazell is very young, and it is made clear to us he is vulnerable and emotionally needy. Yet it was Hazell that 'showed' Ralph what he was. The 'Lolita' element is a bit disturbing, though plausible of course, especially if he had already been sexually abused. I think the bit where Ralph slips into using 'one' instead of 'I' is telling, he wants to distance himself from the whole thing.

But also, I do think he is subconsciously invested in Laurie and Andrew's relationship failing. Maybe he is just being pragmatic and wants to save Laurie the trouble and heartache, but for better or worse, Laurie is also trying to 'work it up into a religion' by connecting with Andrew on a platonic level. And maybe, subconsciously, there is a resentment growing in Laurie because Ralph literally 'can't see' the point of his relationship with Andrew and behaves as though it has no substance because there is no sex.

The thing about Andrew and Laurie is, it's a relationship Laurie has actively chosen to pursue, something which as an introvert he finds very difficult and seems to have barely succeeded in doing with anyone else. It doesn't matter that it's 'doomed'. Ralph's arguments might be right, but that is not the point. Laurie wants to work it out for himself. Maybe Ralph wants to intervene because he had such a hard time working things out. But, he can't live, breathe and eat for Laurie. Nobody can.

Oh, it's just occurred to me that before Andrew, his best friend was imaginary Ralph 😭

[nevertwain]

Ralph and Bunny

Following a recent post by @skicio-zeezee, here are some thoughts.

“"Don't waste time, Spud. It's childish to start an argument about whether we love each other, the moment I go and sit on the other side of the room. Get down to brass tacks. What does all this rigmarole add up to, really? You met me at Sandy's party and you can't forget it. You surely don't still think I went there for the conversation, do you?"

He waited, as if expecting a reply; a disciplinary trick so old and simple that no doubt he was scarcely aware of using it.

"I went because I was on the town, like everyone else in the room. Yes, that includes Alec too, you don't know as much about Alec as you think. Surely Sandy told you it was a queer party before you went there; you knew what it meant?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't just mean that queers would be there. A queer party: something between a lonely hearts club and an amateur brothel. You expected that, didn't you?"

Much of that evening had been a surprise to Laurie, but he didn't want to sound pious, so he said, "Yes."

"And are you going to tell me you'd have gone yourself if you'd been happy and satisfied, even if you did know I'd be there?"

"Yes," said Laurie, meeting his eyes because this was different. "I'd have gone to see you."

"Would you, Spud?" Ralph's face had softened; there was a kind of respect in it too. "After all those years. Yes; I expect you would."

He lit two cigarettes, gave Laurie one, and stood for a while looking down at him in silence.

"I'm not romantic," he began. From his lack of emphasis Laurie saw that he believed this to be true. "When I saw you lying on the deck in all the muck and dunnage, I don't know what I felt, really. You had a two-day beard, you were dirty, you smelt worse than the others because your wound was going bad. I suppose you stood to me for something or other. When you sent me up, I was almost too busy to think about it at the time; but it seemed to sink in later, when I was lying in hospital with nothing to do. So I wrote, because one can't swear to every impression one picks up on a day like that, and I wanted to settle it one way or another. When I heard you were dead, it seemed inevitable, somehow. And after that, so did everything else."

He had spoken in the intent, rather muddled way of a man who is defining his thoughts to himself as he goes along. He had done better for himself, it seemed, than he wanted; for when he saw Laurie's face his own hardened at once.

"Well, that's past history." He added with the clear colourless decision that told nothing, except that the subject was closed, "You can leave that out of it. None of that could happen again." Laurie remembered suddenly the contempt with which he had gazed down at Sandy on the bathroom floor.

"I wasn't thinking that."

"Well, seeing some of the things you do think..." As if it were unnatural for him to meet an emergency except on his feet, he took a quick turn across the room, came back to the hearth, and stood there, poised to move again, looking out across Laurie's head. Laurie could feel how the walls of the room were cramping his eyes. He looked at him, measuring his own resolve against Ralph's courage and his pride, and scarcely realising that there had been a subtle re-orientation. He was feeling now that if he weakened Ralph would respect him less.

“

This is about Bunny, and queerness.

The ‘I wasn’t thinking about that needs to be taken in context about what has gone before.  Laurie has (in not so many words) told Ralph that he has chosen Andrew over him, and Ralph blames it on Sandy’s party and the sort of company he has been keeping.

The speech beginning ‘I’m not romantic’ is about Ralph saying when Laurie turned up on his ship he had a glimpse of what might have been.  What might have been is a higher, nobler, sort of queer relationship, rather than the sort found at Sandy’s party, a relationship with wider horizons than the ‘specialists’ Laurie believes them to be.  But it was taken away from him again, with the implication being that he didn’t deserve it.  “..it seemed inevitable, somehow. And after that, so did everything else” that is, losing his ship and hand, and ending up with someone like Bunny.  The implication is that now he is a ‘failed’ warrior, less than perfect, a cripple, he only deserves whatever he can get, whatever he can get at a party like Sandy’s.

The ‘He had done better for himself, it seemed, than he wanted; for when he saw Laurie's face his own hardened at once’ refers, I think, to him explaining himself rather than being a judgement on Bunny being better than expected.  However, whatever he sees in Laurie’s face – sympathy, compassion, adoration - makes him clam up.

The next bit, “Well, that’s past history..” is Ralph saying that Bunny and people like him, are over as far as he is concerned.  “It won’t happen again”: he won’t slip that far again as he has too much contempt for Sandy’s hysterical queerness that is petty and vindictive. Ralph was not thinking of Sandy, but Laurie sees the connection.

But Laurie’s “I wasn’t thinking that” is because Ralph interprets Laurie’s expression to mean that he thinks Ralph is upset about giving up Bunny, and misses him more than he cares to admit.  He may even think that Laurie blames himself for splitting up Ralph and Bunny, and then ditching him for Andrew.

So Ralph is effectively saying here that he is a man, he can take it, and will not collapse like Sandy, so if he wishes to, Laurie can walk away with a clear conscience.  Ralph is here, again, manipulating Laurie into adopting a posture that fits with his conception of what someone should do in this situation, what a man, not a wimp should act like.  This leads into the curious situation where they can have sex with respect whilst in the background knowing that it may only be temporary (but that is a different subject).

[skicio-zeezee]

Thank you so much @nevertwain this interpretation makes SO much sense 🙌🏼 This is what I love so much about TC, it’s so multi-layered and complex. I’m curious though - Ralph is saying he can take it, and if Laurie wants to walk away he can - he’s saying these things out loud- but does he really feel them? He says he’s fine with Laurie walking away and being with Andrew, but by the end of the novel he seems to try to cling to him even tighter than he does at the beginning. He might not collapse in a dramatic heap like Sandy, but there is definitely a desperation to him trying to keep hold of Laurie by the end. He’s a fascinating character, Ralph.

[renaultphile]

@skicio-zeezee This issue of Ralph trying to make Laurie believe he can 'take it' seems central to me. I'm trying to work out why the image that goes into Laurie's head is of Sandy lying on the bathroom floor, it's not sexual and doesn't seem connected to the notion of the 'specialists', but....Ralph's contempt for him does link to the ending and his protestation in the letter that he doesn't believe in this sort of thing as 'repartee'. And also, to Andrew's comment 'what you want to kill is in yourself'. Maybe that image is so vivid in Laurie's mind because there is something incongruous about Ralph's excessive anger. I mean, yes Lanyon took no nonsense when he was head boy, but he was supposed to be kind, especially to the younger more vulnerable boys. And here he is laying into this half-dead man. It also links to the beating up of Bunny. His 'punishment' is at the most primitive level and I can't help feeling there is an element of self-contempt in it. I suppose you could compare Sandy's 'toxic femininity' (emotional manipulation) with Ralph's 'toxic masculinity' (violence).

[cinnamonsweater]

recently i read Fabulosa! The Story of Polari; Britain’s Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker, which i highly recommend for anyone interested in queer history (and coded language), but especially for fans of the charioteer who want to learn more about the gay culture of twentieth century britain. 

of course, a lot of the time while reading i was thinking about the charioteer; ralph lanyon, how he fits into the gay scene, and his relationship with bunny.

one thing that piqued my interest is that most of the camp gay men (who were the most likely to speak polari) specifically desired and sought out masculine ‘straight’ men as sexual partners, rather than other feminine men. the preference in the gay scene for “real men” is also spoken about in this documentary (link is timestamped, but the whole thing is worth a watch). 

paul baker writes some interesting bits about the ‘trade’ identity, as well as the butch/femme relationships common at the time:

“...for many Polari speakers the ideal partner would be a butch man who did not identify as gay, the Great Dark Man of Quentin Crisp’s fantasies.”

“As mentioned, another term for a sexual partner was trade, which had a range of slightly overlapping meanings. It could refer to a potential, past or current sexual partner, and usually indicated a temporary sexual relationship, sometimes a one-off. Trade sometimes, but not always, indicated a masculine man who might not have identified as gay and would have been likely to have taken the ‘inserter’ role in sex. Such men who were classed as trade did not usually speak Polari and probably would not have identified as trade or talked much about their sexuality… However, trade could also be a station on the way towards a more established gay identity.”

“Internalized homophobia or just plain nastiness might make the trade attack their sexual partner or demand money from them, hence the term rough trade, although this term could also refer more generally to working-class casual male partners.

“There was a distinction between the camp men who identified as gay and more masculine men who did not claim a gay identity but would have taken a male partner. Prior to decriminalization and the subsequent Gay Liberation movement this kind of ‘trade’ identity was pretty common. Drag queen Betty Bourne described one of the sea queens she knew, Big May: ‘She’d been on the boats for years and years. They’d have a husband for the voyage… Seafood is the Polari word. They were all very married, they were in couples. There was the butch and the bitch, it was very aping the heterosexual thing. We called ourselves girls. It’s to do with clinging to our youth, desperately and pathetically.’”

“[in the 1970s] The old queen-trade or butch-femme relationships were seen as problematic through Liberationist eyes, and so clones were a kind of merging of queen and trade into a ‘new, improved’ identity, both masculine and gay – desirable and desired.”

ralph lanyon seems to fit with the general definition of ‘trade’: masculine, straight-passing (he had been with multiple women), dominant, and doesn’t identify with the camp members of the community. regarding rough trade: i don’t think he would have attacked a sexual partner unprovoked (as is baker’s definition of rough trade), but i can definitely see any prospective hookups feeling like they might have been taking a risk with him, based on how he’s perceived by the other gay men:

He stood over the young man, quite quietly, with the kind of expression a captain uses on a tipsy passenger he has found exploring the bridge. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. The young man flinched like a startled fawn, and hurried away. 

“Why the – can’t you look where you’re – well going, you –?” If Laurie had imagined Ralph as a captain before, he now glimpsed him vividly as a first mate. The dancer said, “Well, really, I’m sorry I’m sure, but there’s no need to speak to me like that.” Ralph’s only reply was to stare him out; Laurie could hear him working off his protests on his partner halfway around the room.

[The whole scene with Sandy.]

“I bet he handed you out some canings at school, didn’t he?” “About the usual number,” said Laurie, rather coldly. Bunny put his head on one side and looked down at Ralph with an indulgent smile. “It did something to him, you know. Scratch old Ralph after a couple of drinks, and you’ll always find an unfrocked scoutmaster.”

“I suppose you won’t be able to run to Ralph fast enough with all this.” “You’re afraid of him, really, aren’t you?” “Don’t make me laugh,” said Bunny shrilly. “He never caned me at school.”

“[Toto Phelps]’s scared stiff of Ralph, so he came to me.”

‘If it is any satisfaction to you, I paid a call on Bunny just now and he has been taken to sick bay, with concussion and broken ribs as well as I could judge. He came round in time to agree it was the blackout once again.’

now, i’m making two assumptions about bunny: he’s attracted to the masculine ‘trade’ type over others, and he wanted to cling to his relationship with ralph. now, for all we know, he would have done the same to any two-timing boyfriend and his lover what he did to ralph and laurie, and couldn’t have cared less about the breakup. in my opinion, however, he genuinely wanted to keep ralph to himself, whether out of love, lust, infatuation, idk, but there was definitely some possessiveness there (how many times did he tell laurie how well he knew ralph inside and out?). in any case, a lovelorn, brokenhearted, revengeful bunny is way more fun to think about. 

and i can see why bunny would have wanted to keep hold of ralph once he got him: 

they’re sexually compatible: based on the way the party’s described, there doesn’t seem to be many lanyon types there. of course, we’re seeing it through laurie’s eyes, and he would be inclined to pay the most attention to GASP! flamboyant queers and rent boys (the horror!). nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be many masculine, straight-passing men actually on the scene to choose from. (not to say bunny doesn’t easily get around: he bagged toto as well as a little on the side almost immediately after breaking up with ralph. i imagine picking up sexual partners isn’t the hard part. the hard part is picking up sexual partners he’s genuinely attracted to.)

they’re in an actual relationship: nominally, at least. the answer to what this entails would probably differ depending on which of them you asked. whether or not they’re both faithful to each other (highly doubt), instead of having to go through the trouble of cruising (or paying) for a hookup, bunny has everything he needs at home. 

ralph is vetted: bunny doesn’t have to worry about being attacked by rough trade after sex for no reason, an unfortunately common occurence in the world of queer hookups. (of course ralph does beat him up in ch.16, but not for no reason, and i don’t think bunny wasn’t expecting it, exactly. not that that justifies anything.)

ralph’s stuck in bridstow: for however long his course lasts at the very least. many of the men sought after as ‘trade’ were soldiers, sailors, guardsman, and sex-workers. if bunny did manage to meet a guy who was not only his type but also desired a relationship, there was a chance he would have been unable to remain in the same place for long, due to the transient nature of his job or the war. 

maybe ralph’s rough reputation even excited bunny. the “unfrocked scoutmaster” comment with his “indulgent smile” always gives me the vibe that he would intentionally “scratch” ralph after a few drinks just to see what would happen. maybe he liked experimenting with how far he could push ralph’s self control, especially if he was afraid of him (i don’t buy his “don’t make me laugh!). it’s clear ralph spent a lot of his time with bunny drunk:

“I just happen to know that the old dear practically never passes out flat, no matter what he has; and that hag downstairs would wake him at a pinch.”

“If I’d tried it on you, you’d have spotted it straight away. But with hard-drinking types like old Ralph, who’ve got one or two on board already–”

[the fact that the water jug was already A Thing]

maybe bunny preferred him vulnerable that way, and delighted in finding out all the “funny little kinks” he could. maybe something he said while drunk set off the spark that made bunny want to read ralph’s diaries. 

ralph and bunny’s husband/housewife dynamic in ch.8 is so interesting. reading it back, when bunny first shows up, he tells them to come downstairs and drink the tea out of a proper set and ralph acquiesces. then, he tells ralph to get the kettle. his shock comes when ralph refuses (in so rude a manner). that’s when laurie makes his comment about bunny not being familiar with ralph’s straight look. i’ve always taken that as a suggestion that ralph had been playing a part in the relationship, and bunny had never seen the ‘head prefect lanyon’ ralph that laurie is so familiar with. so was part of this act an easy acquiescence of orders from bunny? he did let bunny turn the flat into an ikea showroom from hell…

maybe his shock is more so from ralph’s rudeness? maybe he expected ralph to have some amount of embarrassment or shame about being caught redhanded with that hussy, but the absolute unapologeticness and audacity came as a shock? 

he gets the idea with the water jug fairly early on. when laurie and bunny are pouring out their tea, ralph refuses and pours himself a gin. he and laurie have a long talk about the war, while bunny sits there left out, then bunny refills ralph’s glass. surely he had been seething and scheming while they talked for so long, not acknowledging him. and at that point, he had only caught laurie in ralph’s bed, and ralph had told him to make the tea himself. not that those two things wouldn’t piss off any significant other, but he’s got a whole evening ahead of ralph blatantly flirting with laurie in front of him and all their friends, and being insulted by both ralph AND his sidepiece, who has the audacity to call him a streetboy! i wouldn’t blame him if he added a drink for every time he felt slighted that evening. no wonder he was able to bear it with such a saintly patience knowing what havoc he was wreaking on ralph’s liver lmao. 

there’s not really any point i’m trying to make here, but ralph and bunny’s relationship is one of the most fascinating parts of the book for me to think about, and seeing it through the twentieth century butch/bitch dynamic is quite interesting.

[awizardcommandingsleep]

Me when it's July: it's almost tc fandom reread time

will you join us?

yay!!!

probably not

Voting ended onJul 20

Also if you have fun ideas for this year's reread do let me know. New readers welcome (i say it every year, we will convince someone eventually 😅)

[renaultphile]

Seeing some of the things you do think......

@nevertwain @cinnamonsweater @skicio-zeezee This debate (x, x, x) has given me so much food for thought, I thought I would try a different kind of analysis on the back of it.

"And are you going to tell me you'd have gone yourself if you'd been happy and satisfied, even if you did know I'd be there?"

The first thing that strikes me is that this could be describing Ralph.  He has clearly gone there for Alec.  I find it hard to take the ‘queer party’ line seriously when I picture them all standing around in the glow of Alec’s birthday candles.  Ralph seems very much not ‘on the town’; we are told he would have walked straight out again if Harry had turned up with his rent-boys, and another party guest hints that he is not a ‘regular’ and never turns up without Bunny.  Maybe I’m out of touch, but aren’t people ‘on the town’ supposed to at least arrive alone?  He complains about Sandy’s friends being invited.  But Ralph, it’s a queer party isn’t it, not a birthday party? 

Ralph makes a sarcastic reference to ‘not going for the conversation’ but Alec literally talks about wishing Laurie had met Bim in his prime, as he was ‘pure restoration comedy’.

The other interesting aspect of this passage is that the thing that seems to horrify Laurie most is not the casual sex, but Sandy’s emotionally manipulative suicide attempt (prompted by Alec’s non-sexual attention to Laurie).  But this takes place in the context of a ‘marriage’, not an orgy, and has little to do with Sandy’s sexuality.  He could just as easily be a jilted wife.

Which brings me on to the next thing.  Surely of all the things Laurie has experienced with Bunny (who wasn’t even at the party), the party is the least of it.  Ralph is ensconced with Bunny in a cosy domestic relationship, again a perfect replica of an unhappy embittered marriage (see Renault’s earlier works) where again Bunny’s effeminate acting out is despised by Laurie.

So what are we to make of Ralph’s excuse that it’s because of the party?  What is Laurie thinking of when he is reminded of Ralph’s contempt for Sandy?  Is he intuiting that Ralph has the potential to be a Sandy?  Alec’s strange question about liking Ralph and Sandy could have gone in subconsciously.  Or is he worried that with Ralph so clearly ‘the man’ he will be relegated to a Sandy or Bunny role?  If he weakens, Ralph will respect him less?  This is the classic female dilemma from Renault’s early novels re-packaged.

But in the end, I wonder if this is an extension of the Andrew/Ralph dilemma.  Andrew is solid, he may be difficult at times, but he knows what he stands for.  Ralph claims not to be romantic, but he clams up on the subject of Laurie dying, a sign which Laurie knows means deep emotion.  The rest of the conversation is designed to massively downplay emotion, and essentially suggest they might as well live together with sex on tap, and avoid having to 'use the network'.  Perhaps in the end this is what makes Laurie unwilling to commit to living with Ralph.  Not that he is tainted, but that he is incongruent.  Casual sex with Ralph, not a problem.  Laurie is equally capable of lying to himself about what this means for his relationship with Andrew, a responsibility he tries unfairly to put back onto Ralph at the end.

And in the end it is the thing that Ralph fears most that finally brings Laurie back to him – being pitied.

[artkfwks]

tried to make a cover for Wingmen 💖

and as a bonus doodle with Jack in full uniform and an insignia that I designed for a previous work, not sure what Case meant when describing it but here we are

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

A timeline of men's fashion from the 18th to the 20th century. (Source)