Chapter 5: images
a. Image of hills
b. River
c. Coffins and funerals
d. St. Michael
e. The needle motif
f. The stolen watch
The Image of Hills
The river is a rich image; the hills are not nearly as potent. Still, it is worth noting the role of the hills.
Visually, the town is dominated by the abbey on a hill. In the last hour of his life, Barry and his wife drove through town to dinner, and crossed the Square in the center of town, where “they had a clear view of the dark skeleton of the ruined abbey that dominated the town’s skyline, set high on a hill, melding with the violet sky” (7). But the import of the abbey, its call to prayer, its role in ancient history – all that is a great vacancy.
For some, the hill with its abbey are important as a visual screen. “To true Pagfordians, Yarvil was little more than a necessary evil. Their attitude was symbolized by the high hill, topped by Pargetter Abbey, which blocked Yarvil from Pagford’s sight, and allowed the townspeople the happy illusion that the city was many miles further away than it truly was” (45). The hill is not an invitation to see more of life; to the contrary, it blocks out reality.
The hills might provide a temporary screen, but reality intrudes. “The natural barriers of river and hill that had once been guarantors of Pagford’s sovereignty seemed diminished by the speed with which the red-brick houses [of the Fields, spilling over from Yarvil] multiplied” (47).
For Howard, the hill and abbey are included in a list of Pagford’s attractions, right up there with hanging baskets of flowers (52).
When Andrew passes the Fields, he is unimpressed, and the measure of his attitude is interesting: “None of it was any more worthy of Andrew’s sustained attention than the ruined abbey of Pagford, glittering with frost” (24).
Hilltop House includes some irony. The best people in the story, other than the sainted departed, are the Jawandas, who live at the bottom of Church Row. Simon, the rough-cut caricature of Howard, with all of his evil and none of his social graces, lives at the highest point of town, with a panoramic view of “the abbey across the valley, stark and skeletal against the pale pink and gray sky,” looking down on the village, “which by night was no more than a cluster of twinkling lights in a dark hollow far below” (13).
The abbey is not a goal, and Simon is not a model. But the hills, or the abbey on the hills, may point at a significant “casual vacancy.”
The River Image
The river is not a pervasive image, but it is noteworthy.
The river is named the Orr. It is about choices, alternatives.
Barry recruits Krystal to his rowing team. Krystal learns to navigate the river of life under his coaching on the water. They work out on a canal in Yarvil, not on the Orr, but Krystal thinks of rowing when she sees the river, and wishes they were rowing there.
There is a bouquet of chrysanthemums in the shape of an oar at the funerals at the beginning and end of the novel, at the coach’s funeral and at Krystal’s.
For Howard, the river is a detail of his picturesque village: “a collection of old buildings, and a fast-flowing, tree-fringed river, the majestic silhouette of the abbey above … the hanging baskets in the Square” (52).
Not everyone sees life as precious or fragile or delightful. Simon sees the river as a dump, and throws the stolen computer there when he is afraid he might get caught.
The two boys, Andrew and Fats, spend time in a private cave, their hole in the riverbank. They lie in their cave, thinking about what matters in life, and making adolescent judgments. Fats proposes that what matters is sex (get it), death (avoid it – risk it sometimes, but avoid it). Andrew agrees, and adds music. Fats agreed to add this third. Then the scene closes: “The river rushed on past the Cubby Hole (148). Later, when they start to make life-changing decisions, Andrew shows Tessa the they abandon their cave snuggled hidden alongside the river of life, and Andrew shows Tessa where the cave is, and that phase of their life is over.
For Parminder, the river is also a potent image. At Barry’s funeral, when she loses confidence that the vicar is paying attention to his own lisping and archaic words (saith, believeth), she turns her thoughts to her father’s death and funeral: “They had scattered Darshan’s ashes in the sad little River Rea in Birmingham. Parminder could remember the dull clay look of its surface, on an overcast day in June, and the stream of tiny white and gray flakes floating away from her” (135).
It is possible that the name of the city nearby, Yarvil, should trigger a connection in the reader’s mind. “Yare” means lively and responsive; it is used especially about a ship. Most people see the word once in their lives, when they read Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, which opens with a shipwreck; the boatswain is shouting in the background, “Yare, Yare!” It isn’t clear whether he wants the sailors to move quickly, or is talking about the ship which is still responsive; in either case, most readers just hear a guy shouting. But it’s nautical.
When Nana Cath is in the hospital dying, she wants to see Krystal. Krystal visits, and Nana Cath murmurs words that are nearly incomprehensible. “‘… owin…’ said the cracked old voice.” ‘She dunno wha’ she’s sayin’,’ Cheryl shouted … But tears had blurred Krystal’s eyes. The ward with its high windows dissolved into white light and shadow; she seemed to see a flash of bright sunlight on dark green water, fragmented into brilliant shards by the splashing rise and fall of oars. ‘Yeah,’ she whispered to Nana Cath. ‘Yeah, I goes rowin’, Nana.’ But it was no longer true, because Mr. Fairbrother was dead” (170). In this scene in which Krystal loses her second life prop, the image of rowing captures her ability to handle life, now lost.
On Krystal’s final trip into Pagford, she points out the ruined abbey to her brother, and calls it a castle. It is plausible that her misidentification suggests that the Church is so absent in her life that she doesn’t even know that it was once a force – and a protective force for the poor. Then she “caught a glimpse of the glittering river, briefly visible before the road sank too low” (356). Is this, perhaps, a description of her life’s path, sinking so low she cannot see any choices?
An hour or so later, walking with Fats and Robbie, she can see the river again, but she is not in control. As she gets closer to the final decisions of her life, trying to get pregnant with Fats, Krystal reviews what is on Hope Street. Kay lives there, “the only social worker she had ever liked, the only one who had got through to her mother. She lived in Hope Street, the same as Nana Cath. She was probably there right now. What if… But Kay had left them. Mattie was their social worker again. … And, Krystal reasoned, squinting as the road turned, and the river dazzled her eyes with thousands of blinding white spots of light, Kay was still the keeper of folders, the scorekeeper and the judge. She had seemed all right, but none of her solutions would keep Krystal and Robbie together” (358). She reviews her options, and feels trapped into a desperate plan: at that point, the river blinds her.
Robbie cannot handle the river by himself. He falls in, unprotected, and drowns.
Sukhvinder is on the bridge over the river when she sees Robbie. She wants to be left alone to mutilate herself. But when she sees Robbie in the water, she moves so fast it is not clear that she made a choice. She jumps into the River Orr to save Robbie. He drowns, but she emerges completely changed. The river may be life for Krystal with Barry’s help, or death for Robbie without effective adult help, or resurrection for Sukhvinder.
Coffins and Funerals
“What matters, Arf?” Fats asks Andrew when they are both high. They build a short list: sex, death and music. Rowling’s story begins and ends with funerals, and the music is same at both. But sex shows up only in the sub-plots, the prolific sub-plots.
There are four deaths in the story. They are not treated carelessly. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that the average American youth will have seen 16,000 simulated deaths by age 18. Many of these deaths on TV or film will be casual; someone is shot and that’s the end of that. In Rowling’s book, by sharp contrast, all four get funerals. There are a few other deaths in the background.
Barry’s death of course, is first; it starts the story. The first third of the book is about people’s reactions to his death and then his funeral.
Barry’s coffin is not polished mahogany. Barry’s eldest son had made the decision, and opted for willow “because it was a sustainable, quick-growing material and therefore environmentally friendly” (134). The non-traditional coffin did cause a stir. “It’s a bloody picnic basket! thought Howard, outraged” (134).
The choice of willow is not quite the same as cremation, but it does not erect any permanent barrier of stone or durable against the earth. The body will decompose and sink into the dirt. Parminder recalls her father’s funeral: he was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the “sad little River Rea” in Birmingham (135).
In the middle of the story, Nana Cath dies. Part Three opens with the Nana Cath’s troubles, and closes with her funeral. After she sees her physician, Parminder, and denounces her, she goes home with her medication in dispute, and falls. She lies on the floor for three days, until Kay, trying to understand the Weedon children’s support network as their caseworker, visits the house and finds her (150). She is hospitalized, and hangs on for a few days; her last words are to Krystal, about rowing. But Krystal’s proud rowing days were over, because Mr. Fairbrother was dead (170). When Nana Cath dies, Terri’s sister Cheryl brings the news. At the door, “Cheryl sucked on a cigarette and squinted at Terri through the smoke. ‘Nana Cath’s died,’ she said. ‘Wha’? ‘Nana Cath’s died, repeated Cheryl loudly. ‘Like you fuckin’ care.’ But Terri had heard the first time. The news had hit her so hard in the guts that she had asked to hear it again out of confusion” (215). In general, Terri is an unsympathetic character, but the chapter following this news is her story, and it is heart-wrenching. Terri breaks, and goes in search of her dealer, Obbo. Several days later, on the day of the funeral (Part Three, chapter 11, 261-267), Krystal is planning to go to the funeral, and gets Robbie ready to go, but then realizes that her mother is drifting dangerously, and stays home to keep her away from Obbo. She does protect her mom, at least for that day, but Obbo rapes her. Nana Cath is cremated.
The end of the book, the single-chapter Part Seven, is the funeral for Krystal and Robbie. Fats saw the coffins en route to the church: “the first was bright pink, and the sight robbed him of breath, and the second was tiny and shiny white” (389). Sukhvinder, who organized the funeral, had made this decision. Barry’s funeral included chrysanthemums arranged into an oar, from the rowing team; Krystal’s coffin had the same. Robbie’s had floral teddy bear. Sukhvinder has also asked Terri to have Krystal’s medal for the rowing championship put around her neck in the coffin. And the music was the same as at Barry’s funeral – kind and simple words about caring for each other, about innocence and experience, a shared emotional experience.
The story is written with enough texture that vacancies are visible. At Barry’s funeral, all the characters from the story are there except the Prices and Krystal. The Prices are isolated on their hilltop. Krystal knows she will not be welcome; she has a hard time with her own family visiting the hospital, let alone the town of Pagford at a funeral.
No one from the story is at Nana Cath’s funeral.
At Krystal’s funeral, there are empty seats; Tessa is alone in the back half of the church. The Fawleys don’t come. Samantha thinks about it, having read about Krystal; but decides not to, because she never knew her. Nonetheless, Krystal’s death does shock Samantha into adulthood, and precipitates a religious conversion. Gavin calls Kay on the day of Krystal’s funeral. He is unaware of the funeral, and is looking for female companionship. Kay diagnoses his need promptly, and asks sarcastically whether Mary rejected him, then hangs up.
Krystal was not at Barry’s funeral; the Fairbrothers skip Krystal’s. The girls from the rowing team are there except the Fairbrother twins. They have decided not to bother their mother, who is still upset about the amount of time Barry spent on the Fields and on Krystal. One of the twins, Niamh, explains, “Mum doesn’t like the idea that she’ll have to see Krystal’s grave every time we visit Dad’s. They’ll probably be really near each other” (394).
Tessa’s experience at the funeral is noteworthy. The image of St. Michael is halfway down the church; all the other mourners are in front of that line. But she is behind it, and can see the image. Prior to this event, Parminder was the only character in the novel who prayed, except for a few desperate pleas from Tessa when she was trying to find her son. But at Krystal’s funeral, Tessa has a complicated response to the image of St. Michael. “Tessa gurgled and snorted into her sodden tissue, and thought how little she had done for Krystal, dead on the bathroom floor… it would have been a relief if St. Michael had stepped down from his glowing window and enacted judgment on them all, decreeing exactly how much fault was hers, for the deaths, for the broken lives, for the mess” (393). She wants justice, not to punish Howard or to save the Fields and keep the clinic open, but for herself. She does not see herself as innocent, but still wants justice. That is not easy to explain. The image in the window does not run seminars about justice; he has a sword.
Besides the four funerals, there are other images of cemeteries and death.
Part Two opens with a somber note about time passing after Barry’s funeral: “It rained on Barry Fairbrother’s grave. The ink blurred on the cards …” (150). It closes with Fats and Krystal in the cemetery, where they look for a little privacy. They see a gravestone with a casual epitaph: “Sleep Tight Mum.” They smoke a joint, and Krystal remembers the young man she had found dead in Terri’s bathroom when she was six. He died of an overdose; he might be Krystal’s dad; story over; no funeral.
They have sex, and then realize that they are next to Mr. Fairbrother’s grave. Krystal recalls that he “had always called her ‘Krys, which nobody else had ever done. She had liked being Krys. He had been a good laugh. She wanted to cry” (211). Fats had a different reaction: “Fats was thinking about how he would be able to work this into a funny story for Andrew, about being stoned and fucking Krystal and getting paranoid and thinking they were being watched and crawling out almost onto old Barry Fairbrother’s grave. But it did not feel funny yet; not yet” (211).
The Sweetloves, who owned the Fields before the Fawleys, are all gone. “All that remained these days of the Sweetloves’ long association with Pagford, was the grandest tomb in the churchyard of St. Michael and All Saints, and a smattering of crests and initials over local records and buildings, like the footprints and coprolites of extinct creatures” (46).
There is little trace of Christian belief in an afterlife. Tessa wants St. Michael to act; someone wants Mum to Sleep Tight; the vicar intones powerful words at Barry’s funeral but does not seem to care about or even
notice their meaning (134). The exception is Krystal, who is sure there is a life after death, and determined to get there and protect her brother.
St Michael
The church in Pagford is Anglican, St. Michael and All Saints. Michael is one of three angels named in the Bible (the others being St. Gabriel and St. Raphael). In the Apocalypse, the last Book of the Bible, there is a reference to a great battle, in which “Michael and all his angels” fight with a dragon.
In the Pagford church, there are stained glass windows, and the largest window has an image of St. Michael. “Halfway down the nave, on the epistle side, St. Michael himself stared down from the largest window, clad in silver armor. Sky-blue wings curved out of his shoulders; in one hand he held aloft a sword, in the other, a pair of golden scales. A sandaled foot rested on the back of a writhing bat-winged Satan, who was dark gray in color and attempting to raise himself. The saint’s expression was serene” (131).
During Barry’s funeral, Howard takes a seat “level with St. Michael” (131). The narrator quietly asserts Howard’s arrogance. Obviously, if the position were an isolated remark, it would be unconvincing. But as he came into the church, he pushed people aside. After he takes his seat, he saves room for the wealthy Fawleys, although there is not room for everyone to sit. Giving seats preferentially to the wealthy may not be the worst crime in the world, but Jesus did criticize it specifically. In this context, the remark about a seat level with St. Michael is clearly a criticism.
In the novel, three people notice the image. The first is Sukhvinder, who is deeply unhappt because Fats has been tormenting her, making fun of some hair on her lip. When she looks at the image, she responds to a possible racist assumption she had never seen before: “She had always liked St. Michael, with his pretty, feminine, Pre-Raphaelite face, his curly golden hair… but this morning, for the first time, she saw him differently, with his foot resting almost casually on that writhing dark devil; she found his untroubled expression sinister and arrogant” (133).
Parminder’s reaction to the image is also clear. She responds to the image negatively, like her daughter: “Long acquaintance had not reconciled her to the white-faced warrior saint staring down at her” (135). But for her, the context is a little different. The reader is seeing the world through her eyes at that point. The vicar is proclaiming the Christian perspective on death and resurrection; she hears the words, and there is no evidence that anyone else does. She notices that he “did not sound as if he were thinking about the sense of the words issuing from his mouth, but only about his own delivery, which was singsong and rhythmic” (135). So she withdrew her attention deliberately from the vicar’s “self-conscious drone,” and thought about her family’s teaching about death.
Tessa is the third character who responds to the image. During the funeral for Krystal and Robbie, she was “directly under the calm gaze of St. Michael, whose foot rested eternally on that writhing devil with its horns and tail” (392). She felt guilty about “how little she had done for Krystal, dead on the bathroom floor… it would have been a relief if St. Michael had stepped down from his glowing window and enacted judgment on them all, decreeing exactly how much fault was hers, for the deaths, for the broken lives, for the mess…” (393). Tessa did more for Krystal than any other adult after Barry died, but does not brag about it, or even feel that she deserves praise. Like Parminder, she feels humble, not proud, when she thinks about God, or his angels. She is on the side of the angels, not because she is lining up their votes and expects their support, but because they are good. She expects to find the justice of God to be a beautiful and attractive thing, not because her enemies will be in trouble, but because justice has its own terrible beauty. This is the opposite of Howard, who shoves his way into a place level with St. Michael, and keeps the poor away.
Parminder and Tessa are the only characters in the story who pray. It is, then, noteworthy that those two – plus Sukhvinder, who is somewhat inarticulate, but is clearly responding to the stirrings of conscience – are the ones who notice the image.
The needle motif
There are a variety of needles in the story, like the variety of herbs in Romeo and Juliet. And like Friar Lawrence’s herbs, these needles can be medicine or poison.
When Barry is in the ambulance and later when Nana Cath is in the hospital (169), they have needles stuck in them. The needles are there to help, but they still look horrible. Barry’s attendants were “strapping on masks and shoving in needles”(9). With Nana Cath, the picture is worse. “Nana Cath was almost unrecognizable. One side of her face was terribly twisted, as though the muscles had been pulled with a wire. Her mouth dragged to one side; even her eye seemed to droop. There were tubes taped to her, a needle in her arm” (169).
On the other hand, in Krystal’s world, a needle is for drugs. People thought of the Fields as a place where there were used condoms and discarded needles in the grass, and addicts hanging around the neighborhood (297). When Kay visits the Weedon home to evaluate Terri’s condition, she finds a biscuit tin with Terri’s “works” inside, including “a syringe, a bit of grubby cotton wool, a rusty-looking spoon and a dusty polythene bag” (61).
Fats has a strong reaction to needles. He was “scared of things that pierced flesh, of needles and blades (66). But his best friend, Andrew, depended on a needle for his life – an EpiPen, “the Adrenalin-filled needle that Andrew was supposed to carry with him at all times because of his dangerous nut allergy” (66).
Tessa is fighting to maintain the right sugar level in her blood, and administers medicine in the morning after breakfast, inserting a pre-filled needle into her own belly (241). Fats is repulsed by it, and comments, ““I’m sorry that you shooting up at breakfast makes me want to puke, Tess” (241).
Tessa and Colin adopted their son. When Fats fights against parental authority and denounces them, she wonders if she has been a defective mother because he is adopted. There is no logic to it, but she is deeply distressed when he refuses to refer to her legitimate motherhood. “Fats had recently stopped calling her ‘Mum.’ She had to pretend not to care, because it made Colin so angry; but every time Fats said ‘Tessa’ it was like a needle jab to her heart” (243).
When Shirley hears that her husband has engaged in sexual activity with Maureen, she is enraged, and decides to kill him. She takes one of Andrew’s EpiPens from where it is stored at the deli, and sets off to stab Howard. A shot of Adrenalin might not be damage everyone, but it might kill an obese man with a heart condition, and Shirley has been reading about it. Her intent is to take the medicine that is there to protect Andrew, and use it to execute Howard. When she finds Howard already having a heart attack, she calls an ambulance, and hides the murder weapon. From then on, she is afraid someone will find it, or Howard will recover and remember and ask about it – or maybe worse, simply tell about it.
The final use of a needle in the story is wrapped in painful paradox. At the end of the story, Krystal makes the same decision that Juliet made: she will not let death separate her from the person she loves fiercely. So she chooses death, and makes it happen. She uses her mother’s works, and the town dismisses her as a whore and an addict like her mother. But she is not a whore, not an addict; she died for love.
The stolen watch
I admire Rowling’s writing. Perhaps I can explain why if I trace a thought process.
In the final vignette of the book, the funeral for Krystal and Robbie, there is a ragged detail. Tessa is weeping, wondering what more she could have done for Krystal, looking at the image of St. Michael, and thinking eternal thoughts. Then there is a break in the flow: she sees that one of the Fields urchins is wearing her watch. Why does Rowling break into the funeral scene to gnaw on a watch? It’s annoying.
Come to think of it, the watch intruded repeatedly. Tessa took it off in her office (36), realized much later in the day that it was gone (85), because Krystal had stolen it (86), and she put it in a cheap plastic jewelry box (also stolen, from Nikki) (89), a box in which she kept her pitiful treasures like the rollups (hand-rolled cigarettes) that Fats gave her (262), where Fats saw it and considered making a scene but then opted to resent Cubby instead (305), but then Terri stole it from Krystal (327) and sold it to Obbo (328), except that Obbo paid her in drugs, including the drugs that Krystal used to kill herself (379), and now the watch is on some kid’s wrist in the church (393).
The watch is stupid, or significant.
So, pondering the watch suspiciously, I note that the funeral includes a reminder that Krystal was not a saint. She did not just sleep around; she also stole stuff.
Andrew’s thoughts on the day of the funeral put that in context, perhaps. Andrew retrieves a long-submerged memory. When he was much younger, his doctor found he had a dangerous peanut allergy, and notified his teachers at St. Michael’s. They stored an EpiPen there for him, and explained the problem to his classmates. Fats tested the allergy: he gave Andrew a peanut wrapped in a marshmallow. When Andrew stopped breathing, Krystal recognized the problem and got help, saving his life. Krystal would have gotten recognition for it, but she knocked out Lexie’s teeth the next day. What people – especially Howard – remembered was the assault, which Lexie probably deserved, knocking out teeth that were already loose. People – including Andrew – forgot that she was a hero.
She stole the watch. That’s bad and she’s not a saint (insight #1). Juxtaposed in the chapter: keep it in context (insight #2).
Still pondering the watch suspiciously, I note that she kept it in a box of pitiful treasures. In the Potter series, there was an orphan with a box of silly stolen treasures – Tom Riddle. The Horcrux madness began with that box. Rowling pays attention to the treasures in a child’s life, and consider them important, revealing. So what are Krystal’s treasures? Not much there: everything of value in that house gets sold for crack. What else was there? Her treasures include the box itself (stolen), rollups from Fats, the stolen watch, the medal from beating St. Anne’s rowing on their river, and a red plastic heart with Robbie’s photo. That’s worth recalling at her funeral. (Insight #3)
Still pondering the watch: they are used to keep track of time. Barry and Mary Fairbrother were happily married, but she was upset about his use of time. The first conflict that comes to light in the book is expressed in terms of time. It’s not just that he is struggling against a deadline with the newspaper. Much more importantly, “he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life” (6). It says “space,” but means “time.” Mary felt that Krystal was taking time from Barry that did not belong to her. (Insight #4)
I note that Tessa used it to keep track of time. The watch shows up in the story when Tessa is in her office at 10:30 in the morning. She has an appointment with Krystal at 10:40. Krystal burst in the door and slammed it shut 10:51. This is a problem with people in helping professions. Tessa really did care about Krystal, truly and deeply. And Krystal trusts her. When Krystal is raped, and when Robbie is abused, Krystal does plan to get help from Tessa. But is has to be scheduled right; she has to follow a procedure. The procedure that Krystal plans is not in the counseling department handbook: she plans to shag Fats, get pregnant, and ask the baby’s grandmother for help. Those details are not in the school manual, but the underlying idea – that you have to follow a procedure to get help from a counselor -- is based on school policy. Is it okay for Krystal to take Tessa’s time, or is it some kind of crime like theft? (Insight #5)
Last meander on time: There is a school of thought that speaks of the different “languages of love.” People express love or perceive love in five different ways: praise, service, gift, time, and touch. (1) Praise, words of encouragement: you can give out an endless supply. But no one praised Krystal except Barry Fairbrother, and the newspaper article that he arranged – and, in the end, Sukhvinder’s eulogy. The medal that she won rowing was a great treasure; she got it because of him. (2) Service, actions that help: A variety of people offered services to the Weedons, including Kay, but their services were not perceived to be love, and indeed may not have been motivated by love. (3) Gifts: Fats gives Krystal a few rollups (hand-rolled cigarette), and she treasures them, not because she likes them – it is explicit that she does not like them (262) – but because they are gifts. (4) For Krystal, touch was not a good language of love: her mother was a prostitute sometimes, and Krystal was raped. When she and Fats touched, he was using her, and she was using him. By contrast, it is noteworthy that when Parminder realizes that she has a wonderful daughter, she keeps touching her. (5) Time, especially “quality” time, is a precious commodity; and it is a limited commodity, unlike praise. Barry gave Krystal his time. (#6)
When Rowling kept track of the chain of custody of that silly watch, did she really intend all that symbolism? Not all, for sure – but some, for sure.
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