MDMD(5) Chap 16-- Plot Summary

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Chapter 16-----The Big Cheese, Love, and Angular Momentum 

     Mason tells Dixon of how he and his wife met---or rather, he makes up 
a plausible, if in fact ridiculous, and perhaps hilarious, story of how 
they might have met. This "to avoid betraying her."  Rebekah’s 
actual entry into Charlie’s life is destined to remain shrouded, if not 
Stroud-ed, in mystery (although on p 171 it is hinted that she may be 
from London.) Mason’s tale is successful, for "Dixon believes ev’ry 
word
" [p167]

     There is indeed, in the English county of Gloucestershire, a fam’d
annual cheese rolling in May, information about which is found in the 
P-list archive for that month. In Mason’s story (as related by Rev 
Cherrycoke, and thence pro-offered to us via the authorial Narrator) 
the men of Stroud have built a cheese 512 times as large as an ordinary 
cheese, and weighing four  tonnes. 

     Meanwhile Mason’s father gives Charlie the day off from the Mill 
for his birthday. This being a time of year at which love is in the air, 
young (and not so young) couples find  pleasing dalliance from 
moment to moment in all manner of places. Seemingly such a happy 
time, yet rather depressing for unattached souls brave enough to walk 
thence abroad, such as Mason. Having nought else to occupy him, he 
decides to wait for the arrival of "the majestic food  product" whose 
"Spectacle"  is being cheered and toasted (toasted cheese?) and even 
sung to,  along its winding way. [p168]  In any case, its arrival may 
herald the arrival of the rich and beautiful Susannah Peach. 

     Mason has a wonderful lustful and imaginitive reverie about 
Susannah, the daughter of a silk merchant, being brought 
"bolts" of silk "from the furthest of the far Eastern lands", including 
those "damasks with epic-length Oriental tales woven into them, 
requiring hours of attentive gazing whilst the light at the window went 
changing so as to reveal newer and deeper labyrinths of event
"
 It seems Mason has sometimes broken into her house to smell her 
bedlinen, to some a very pleasant if highly illegal diversion  [p169]

     Mason is "singl’d out for Misadventure
The Victim of a Cheese
malevolent"---sort of. Our giant cheese comes away from the Cotswold
Waggon it is being carried forth in, and, "hitting the Slope perfectly 
vertical
" ends up rolling down the hill---as was common custom for 
smaller cheeses. He is rescued from being flattened by it by "way of a 
stout shove, preceded by an energetick Rustling of Taffeta,--", Rebekah,
his lovely hero. [p170]

     We return from Mason’s story to St Helena, and Rebekah’s return.
(You may wish to look at my opening comments for Chap 15, part 2.)
Out in the forest, she tells Mason to "Look to the Earth", whose 
"Tellurick Secrets you could never guess." She leaves in an appropriately 
ghostly evaporation, and Mason is left with deep spiritual longing and 
a stiff Willy. [p172]

     Mason returns indoors. The next morning, he has a 
conversation with Maskelyne which indicates that Dieter
is a ghost, and that moreover, Nevil is strangely fond of him 
(perhaps like Sebastian was fond of down-and-out Dieter in 
Brideshead). Mason asks to leave for James Town, which offers 
Nevil, so oddly and brightly dressed, more private time to 
share with his ghostly friend.  [p173] The chapter ends with 
Mason getting on a Dhow boat, having been  assisted in his 
fare-negotiations with the boatman by yet another, unnamed,
but helpful  ghost. [p174] 

Eric Alan Weinstein
University of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk