Bangor University DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Take Me with You Bailey, Sara
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Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Take me with you Bailey, Sara Award date: 2015 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 Take Me With You Sara Bailey Bangor University Submitted for degree of PhD 1 ABSTRACT Take Me With You consists of my novel, Take Me With You, and a critical commentary on the process and context of writing it. The novel is about Helena, who returns to the Orkney Islands to help look after her father who is ill. She has not been back for nearly a decade and her return coincides with a school reunion. Helena has to face the past she has been running away from, and deal with not just the death of her father during her visit, but the death, ten years earlier, of her best friend, Anastasia. She learns that friendship doesn't die, it waits. The novel centres around the relationship between Helena and Anastasia as adolescents and was written in response to three novels that have influenced my writing - Helena Dunmore's 'Talking to the Dead', Anne Fine's 'Tulip' and Michele Roberts' 'Daughters of the House'. All of these novels explore the moment of tension in pre-adolescence girls and the intense relationships girls form at this stage. I examine in detail how this schism in these friendships can be intensely destructive using Adrienne Rich's essay 'Compulsory Heterosexuality' (1980) as a theoretical model that informs my own core feminist beliefs and the writing of the novel. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 4 Declaration and Consent ......................................................................................................... 5 Part One .................................................................................................................................... 9 Take Me With You: Novel ...................................................................................................... 9 Part Two ............................................................................................................................... 214 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 215 Literature .............................................................................................................................. 221 Talking to The Dead ............................................................................................................ 226 The Tulip Touch ................................................................................................................... 229 Daughters of the House ....................................................................................................... 234 Compulsory Heterosexuality and Analysis ........................................................................ 240 Location ................................................................................................................................ 247 Finding the Voice ................................................................................................................. 252 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 255 Prospective Immigrants Please Note .................................................................................. 257 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 259 3 Acknowledgements My thanks to my supervisor Ian Davidson for his unfailing patience, humour and trust. He took this project on half way through and has been dedicated to bringing it to fruition. I would also like to thank Graeme Harper for being there at the start and believing in the project. Thanks too go to Bangor University Southampton Solent for their support of my Ph.D and research. I could not even have begun this project without the support of the Women’s History MA group, especially Dr Stephanie Spencer, Dr Diana Peschier and Dr Julie Peakman. Thank you to my family for listening to me, particularly Pippa, Morgan and Martha, and to Marc Blake for reading and re-reading countless drafts of the novel and Liz Stone for her eagle eye at the proof reading stage. I’d like to thank Orkney and the Orcadians – unknowable, endlessly fascinating and a source of inspiration on many levels. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to my father, Dr. Olaf Cuthbert, who never got to see it finished, but who has been with me all the way. 4 Part One Take Me With You: Novel 9 Friendship doesn’t die, it waits. Ghosts come in different guises: sometimes as a memory or an old flame, sometimes as the line of a song you thought you had forgotten, or a face you never expected to see again, sometimes, as a promise made and broken. 10 Prologue 'Tell me we'll be friends forever.' 'We'll be friends forever,' I said. 'And you love me more than life itself.' I pushed her off the armchair and we fell in a heap giggling. 'I love you more than life itself,' I said, as she tickled me to screaming point. 'Promise?' 'Promise.' She held my face in her hands. 'And wherever you go, you'll take me with you?' 'Through thick and thin.' 'Sick and sin.' And the laughter burned. You were mine then. In that moment before we tasted sex, while we were still vestal pure. You were mine, body and soul. It was such a fleeting moment, and we both knew it was going, drifting out of our grasp like dandelion seeds on a summer’s day. I held you, made you promise: never leave me, never let me go. 11 Chapter 1 The islands slipped in and out of view from under the wing of the plane, a grey ribbon of roads connecting each to the next. The battleship wrecks still nosed their way out of the water alongside the causeways. My stomach lurched as we made our descent. I hate flying. 'Would you care for a sweetie?' The air hostess leaned over and offered me a bowl of barley sugars. I took one and passed the dish on to the man next to me without looking at him. My attention back to the window, I unwrapped the orange sweet and put it into my mouth. I was grateful for the sugary stickiness that glued my teeth. I didn't want this to be seen as an opportunity for conversation—I'd feigned sleep for most of the short flight. The last thing I needed was to find my companion was an old friend of the family or someone I'd gone to school with. I wasn't good with faces and—although I'd given him a quick sideways glance as he sat down—you never could tell. He looked like one of the oilmen who visited from time to time: shabby suit, umbrella and raincoat. No islander would ever carry an umbrella. The wheels dropped with a shallow thud. I was drawn to gaze out of the window again, looking for familiar landmarks to take my mind off the impending landing. The Churchill Barriers, the Italian Chapel and Scapa Bay: all so close, it seemed as if we might drop down into the sea at any moment. I pulled my attention away and adjusted my focus to watch the ancient Viscount propellers and their dizzying whirr; part of me willing them to get us down safely and part of me daring them to give up the effort, to judder from high speed to slow spin and a final horrible stillness, for the heavy metal crate to crumple and break as it dropped out of the sky and joined the carcasses of ships in the freezing waters below—to feel nothing ever again, to never have to return. It was almost as if I could will it to happen. But nothing is ever that simple, there would be the cold to contend with; Gulf Stream or not, the Pentland Firth was not for the fainthearted. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. I didn't want to be back here; not now, not ever. The plane came to a halt. I had been concentrating on my breathing, keeping it slow and steady, and as we stopped I unclenched my hands and opened my eyes to look out of the window. A tractor and trailer were heading across the tarmac towards us. There was 12 something familiar about the driver. Could be someone I knew, but it was difficult to see clearly through the tiny airplane window. The terminal building was different: a bright glass box had replaced the low wooden hut I'd left from last time. But it was comforting to note that some old habits remained. In the field next to the runway, a couple of old boys stopped their work to lean on fence posts and watch what the wind had blown in. The doors opened and we stood almost as one. Luggage was heaved out of overhead racks, coats put on, heads ducked and bumped as we all tried to manoeuver our way out of the small space. Leaving the aircraft, I negotiated the metal steps