vilakins | Marlows ficlet: False Advertising

Entry tags:

ficathon stories

Marlows ficlet: False Advertising

Written for the trennels ficathon, and therefore only of interest to anyone who's read the Marlow books.

False Advertising

It was bad enough getting an invitation to the Kingscote reunion, which had promptly gone into the bin, but then Lawrie had rung.

"Tim! Hasn't it been ages! Are you going to the reunion?"

"Can't imagine much worse. I've no desire to clap eyes on me Auntie, let alone assorted comfortably-married-with-children who measure out their lives with teaspoons and nappy changes."

"I don't!"

"I know you don't, clot." Lawrie after all was being seen these days with a girl band singer with pink hair and a permanent trilby. "We could always meet up in the city for lunch," said Tim, safe in the knowledge that Lawrie would never get round to that.

"Oh. Right." Lawrie sounded disappointed, which was briefly cheering, but then said brightly, "Must dash!"

"Me too. Bye."

Tim went through to the kitchen to make herself a consoling cup of strong, sweet coffee, accompanied by several chocolate digestives. It had been bad enough last time, five years before. "I'm in advertising,"" she'd told people, and when they'd asked what she'd done, she'd said airily, "Oh, lots, mainly in print publications." As in newspaper.

She laid out proofs and e-mailed them to the advertiser for approval, then submitted them for printing. Once she'd thought she'd end up copywriting or doing the art-work, but it hadn't taken long to see that her clever little caricatures weren't in the same league as the work turned out by the art department--anything at all, and from any angle, not just quirky people--and the closest she came to copywriting was occasionally correcting typos and grammar.

The office wasn't even much fun. The others were so cliquey, having lunch together and sharing jokes. Someone had once said that Tim's were too cruel, but that just showed they didn't share her mordant--nice word, that--sense of humour.

Of course she could breeze through the reunion like last time, say the same things and fool them all, but she'd know how far short of her dreams she'd fallen.

Most of them had, she supposed.

Lawrie had done the best of them all, with her guest roles in various TV series (stage was far too boring, what with being the same thing every night). "I'm going to be the next Celia Imrie," Lawrie had said the last time Tim had seen her, "but better looking. She's ancient, but still in everything, even that awful Star Wars episode 1." She probably would too, unless she got a film and became yer actual Star.

It was easy to see why Lois Sanger had a thing about the Marlows. All right, Ann and Kay were married and Rowan was farming organic, but Ginty had appeared anonymously in glossy magazines wearing glossy makeup and clothes, and Nicola was something in banking or investments, all that maths paying off, as she'd said cheerfully. Even had a yacht of her own and had crewed on an all-female team in some round-the-world race recently. Something to do with bread?

Tim still didn't have any time for sport, or for that matter any exercise more strenuous than walking to the closest Underground. Which was probably another reason she'd rather not go to the reunion, especially one full of whippet-thin Marlows, now that she was stouter than Pomona Todd had ever been.

Prompt: Some kind of comeuppance for Tim.

I do actually like Tim as a character (perhaps not in RL) but this idea was fun to play with.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

**claws wildly in the air with glee**
It's not that I hate Tim, at all, it's just ... she so deserves this.

I actually rather like Tim, except when she was unreasonably cruel to Nicola about her being given the Shepherd Boy part. I'd have found her very entertaining at school, but not regarded her as a friend. It's just that, like most talented students, she didn't become what she dreamed she'd be.

Nicola's yacht BTW is just a small one she takes out on the Broads.

In my mind, it all went wrong for Tim at university. Suddenly there were lots of driven people and even though she joined the DramaSoc, somehow no one ever really cottoned on to her suggestions for plays to stage and she spent her entire career there helping with props. So, in pique, she declared that she didn't want to work in theatre anyway and was going to work on her art, but - to annoy the family, most likely - would concentrate on commercial work, not self-expression. Yet as hard as she tried to sell out, no one much wanted to buy.

I like her too in a way as someone who makes things happen (a bit like, if you've seen it, Tony in the TV show Skins) and think she is a marvellous and unusual character. But yes, in real life she'd have said something arrogant or too caustic to me and I'd have given her a wide berth ever since.

[nods] That all makes a lot of sense too, and is very likely. I also imagine she alienated a lot of people with her snark and doesn't have a lot of friends. Did she have more at school than Lawrie, who did seem to be protected rather than seen as fair game for caustic salvoes?

No, I wouldn't have thought anyone but Lawrie - and Nicola, by vague default - could be considered Tim's friend. But I can imagine Tim rather insisting that that was the way SHE wanted it and Lawrie was enough (meanwhile Lawrie is just too lazy to care), which conveniently means she never has to try or feel rejected.
Goodness, I sound as if she stole my fortune or something! There must be some deep psychological reason why I enjoy imagining Tim's failings.

At least no one in turn tries to be her friend, and even Nicola, I was glad to see, is fairly cool and non-committal when Tim makes an airy attempt to be friends again (I can't remember in which book).

Perhaps you knew someone like her at school. It's one thing I was very glad to discover: that people aren't usually as petty and cruel as adults.

No, I don't believe I did, or since - though that is certainly true. And yes, Nicola is not the forgiving type, pace Lois.

hahahahhahahahahahah the bit about her being fat at the end is brilliant. I never really did care for Tim. And as a ginty devotee thank you for giving her something.
What is Miranda doing now please?

Now I've read

girlyswot's story, I can only think of her being a buyer for her father's shop. Hmm. A Reform rabbi in London!

I've always wondered what she did about Passover when it fell at a different time from Easter, or the school meals when they served pork, or mixed meat and dairy. I suspect nothing; she seemed fairly secular, but people like that do sometimes embrace their traditions.

Gosh, these are fantastic, both the Tim story and the Giles story. You've got the tone absolutely right (and there's a particular pleasure to reading stories so subversive of the originals that sound exactly as if they'd been written by Forrest). I abase myself before your talent!

You do? When you've done Wimsey so well? Thank you! Literary fandoms are much harder as it's not just the dialogue you have to get right.

I'm glad someone outside the comm read these. :-)

Half the time when I look at stories I think "I could never have done that" and the other half I think "I could have done that better". This was definitely one of those times when I thought "I could never have done that". I've only read two of the Marlowe books, but I thoroughly enjoyed them both, and I think you nailed the narrative voice.

I've read all but the two set in Elizabethan times (a Marlow ancestor) because the library system here doesn't have those. I'd buy them if they were reprinted; the characters are so wonderfully complex and real.

I was named after Nicola Marlow!

I read the school ones when I was about 12 because of this and fell in love with the language, Forest's and the Marlows' (I said 'thanks trimmensely' for about a year) but only read them all in sequence this year. I like the school ones best because I can relate to them, having been to a boarding school, though Falconer's Lure has some beautiful writing (a hunt, the death of a hawk).

I've read The Attic Term and The Cricket Term and fell in love with the literary references (SO MUCH the sort of thing I was reading myself) and the whole drama thing (my main reason for thinking that your being-nasty-to-Tim story can't really be true - and therefore I can enjoy it without feeling sorry for Tim - is that anyone who can write a play, direct it AND do the lighting and the sound entirely by themselves in less than half a term clearly has a brilliant organisational career ahead of them. She's probably head of MI5 by now... I can really see her as a sort of female Sir Humphrey Appleby, only more self-consciously cynical).

I do actually rather like Tim, though she was particularly nasty to Nicola at one point about something that wasn't her fault (in 'End of Term'). Those were just the prompts that appealed.

The school stories are best read in order to see the characters develop: Autumn Term (lots of good Tim), End of Term, Cricket Term, and Attic Term. Well, all of them are really, but you can leave out the holiday ones. Tim's funny, often bitingly so, and very clever, but I'm not sure she'd like being a spy: no public acclaim or anything she could point to and say, "I did that!".

I once knew a guy who applied to our SIS, and they said it was mainly filing and checking data and you had to say you were a clerk (which he wouldn't have liked). He also said you couldn't resign; the only way out was retirement or death, but I'm not sure he was serious there. He ended up flying small planes in South America for a missionary group and got his adrenaline fix that way.

I thought that they had been reprinted - one of them quite recently?

I'm not sure I'm interested enough to pay over $50 for each. :-(

I like the stouter than Pomona Todd bit at the end! Hmm. I wonder if that bothered Tim even more than not having made it in life.

I like Tim, though, I must admit. It's Miranda I could never bear!

I like most of them (and Tim's so entertaining), but I'm not actually sure I would have in real life: Lawrie's selfishness and whining, Nicola's unnerving competence (all the insecurity and doubt is hidden on the inside), Tim's biting comments, Miranda's confidence, Lois's duplicity... Perhaps Jan. :-)

Those prompts just happened to give me ideas.

>Even had a yacht of her own and had crewed on an all-female team in some round-the-world race recently. Something to do with bread?

Rolls over with laughter, then sits up and begs for more

Perhaps next year. :-)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Marlows ficlet: False Advertising

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject