To Serve Them All My Days - Week 9

[Hugh]

Sorry, I must have forgotten to do this last week. Week 9 covers the whole of part VIII

[Brian E]

TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS – 9th Week - PART VIII, Chapters 1-3
I will put the summary in spoilers. (view spoiler)[
PART VIII – PLENTITUDE
CHAPTER 1
SubCh.1 – David is entering a time of life, between his 2nd marriage and Dunkirk, that he referred to as his time of plentitude. Chris and he honeymoon in France. David is open with Chris about his relationship with Beth. Chris worries if she will be able to produce a son as she is approaching 30 and also about her ability to adjust to life at Bamfylde and a life helping to ‘mother’ the students.
SubCh.2 – Chris has a good relationship with the teachers and especially Alison, Boyer’s wife and finds herself doing more mothering as circumstances have Bamfylde accepting younger students, lowering its average age by 2 years. Chris has opinions about Bamfylde methods and often offers them to David. David believes in tradition and she doesn’t. She thought about candidature but did not request one since, despite David’s assertions, she thought it would cause problems for him. Howarth seeks Chris’ assistance in student Bradshawe’s personal problems. Chris discovers she is pregnant and tells David that this will give her a purpose, as she hadn’t had one yet.
SubCh.3 – Chris has a miscarriage. David wasn’t there, but old Rigby got Dr. Willoughby who could do little but ease her pain. Chris feels like Bamfylde was a prison where everyone but her had adapted to its routines. Chris packs a bag and drives away.
SubCh.4 – Molyneux spots Chris and tells David who at first thinks it must be a student going joyriding. Spotting her bag gone, David realizes that she left. David tracks her down and finds Chris’s car off the side of the road at the crest of the moor with her slumped in her car seat apparently asleep. David tells her that women often “get all kinds of fancies” after pregnancy. Chris says it’s really because she feels useless, but politics is no longer the answer for her. David sees Howarth who suggests that David separate the newly arrived under-elevens from the older Second Form students and hire Chris to be in charge of this group.
CHAPTER 2
SubCh.1 – David believes they have the cash and growth to make the under-elevens a growth area for Bamfylde. Chris hesitates but agrees to give it a go. The students soon call it the Cradle and it is an instant success. Chris finds enthusiasms from her childhood returning and she avidly selects the books and other tools her charges learn from. Her nurturing and wise problem solving is contrasted with the more limited abilities of the overbearing Second Form ruler, Miss Nixon. A problem with a Second Form student Hookham is resolved by putting him in the Cradle under Chris’s care where Hookham blossoms including judging a Treasure Island treasure map contest.
SubCh.2 Chris sees David as inadequate in dealing with the younger students but superb in dealing with the upper students. She joins in on one of David’s class discussion on Mussolini and impresses the students with her more hawkish perspective.
SubCh.3 – Its 1936 and British and World event affect the school atmosphere. George V dies, Edward VIII abdicates, Mussolini invades Ethiopia, Hitler reoccupies the Rhineland and purges reign in Moscow. Driscoll a near-sighted knobby -kneed often-teased boy finds his calling in cross-country. But when he loses his glasses during a meet, he runs into a “slough as thick as black treacle” and is kept from drowning by the combined efforts of several boys.
SubCh.4 – David arrives to assist in the final rescue efforts. Local farmer and former Bamfylde day student Man Dixon also assists carrying Driscoll into his farmhouse. David praises the five boys, including 2 Cradlers, who helped save Driscoll. Due to the possibility of someone like old Rigby interrupting, Chris resists David’s suggestion of a little parlor fireside nookie.
CHAPTER 3
SubCh.1 – It’s spring of ’37, and David and Chris run into an Old Boy named Christopherson when he comes visiting Bamfylde, announcing over Old Boy sherry that he is leaving Oxford to fight with the Republicans in Spain. This surprises and worries David as Christopherson was one of his most committed pacifists at school. David counsels him to return to Oxford. Then Chris walks in, guesses what Christopherson is doing and says “Good for you. You won’t get his blessing but you can count on mine.” They give him lunch, send him off and find out right before Christmas that he had been killed.
SubCh.2 – The Sixth, Fifth and even the Fourth Forms pepper David with questions about world events in class. David envisions even more growth for Bamfylde, targeting over 400 students, and gets Board approval for a new library. Chris tells David she is pregnant. Howarth gets sick and David takes over his classes. David visits Howarth at the hospital and Howarth tells him he is dying and asks him to keep it quiet and allow him to return to the school to die there. David agrees.
SubCh.3 – During the summer term, Chris, David and Barnaby spend a lot of time with Howarth. After the new term opens, Chris is rushed to the nursing home to be ready for birthing. David sees Howarth who shows him his will leaving everything, except for 200 pounds to Chris, to Bamfylde. It is about eleven thousand pounds. David has to rush to Chris at the nursing home and leaves Howarth with his picture of Amy Crispin, his long-lost love. David arrives and Chris has already given birth to a baby boy. While Chris wanted to name a boy after David, David rejects that and prefers to call him Ian, which is Howarth's first name. David rushes back to Bamfylde and finds that Howarth has died. David goes to his quarters and reads a letter from Julia Sprockman (Darbyshire). Her husband has died and she asks David to accept her son Charles as a Bamfylde student. Her late husband wanted that for Charles too.
SubCh.4 – David asks for a moment of silence for Howarth from the students in the Big Hall. Later, at the Old Boys annual London banquet, during a moment in Howarth’s memory, Old Boy Gilmour tells a story of how Howarth secretly paid for part of his education when his parents were unable to do so in order for Gilmour to remain at Bamfylde. The attendees give a standing ovation in memory of Howarth.
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[Cat]

The grit of the 'donors' on the marsh (Chapter II, SubCh.3-4) is a highlight of the novel for me!