Atdtda38: The supranational idea, 1083-1084

[Paul Nightingale]

The Chums of Chance are reintroduced, and the dialogue that opens the
section echoes the passage that opened the novel on 3. In the first chapter
dialogue is not attributed to named speakers but relationships (a hierarchy
of command) are indicated. Here, there is reference to leisure and
consumption (1083). Moreover, if the novel opens with the Chums taking off,
this section sees them looking down rather than up. They are (again)
witnesses, or observers, just as Dally has been throughout the chapter.
However, Dally’s location has always been such that it emphasises the
partial nature of her perspective; whereas that of the Chums is rather more
wide-ranging, if not necessarily omniscient. Lindsay points out that the
third dimension might represent political organisation above (so to speak)
the level of the nation state; it also alludes, more prosaically, to war
conducted from the air, ‘a means for delivering explosives’ – cf the
conversation between Reef and Yashmeen on 1072.

Dally’s street-side introspection (eg the end of 70.1 on 1068; the opening
of 70.8 on 1077) has been a kind of routine behaviour to frame the narrative
thus far in this final chapter. Part V (ie one chapter) as a whole takes its
heading from her home, ‘her flat just off the rue du Départ’ (1066), a
location that takes her away from society and, as she returns home from
speaking to Merle, allows her recollections to take over the narrative. Very
quickly, her personal narrative falters with Kit ‘out in Western Ukraine
someplace, off on some grand search after she didn’t know what’ (1067). Her
return to the narrative on 1077 finds her where she was left on 1068; once
again her pov is found wanting as Policarpe quickly reintroduces Kit, whose
presence in Paris is, for Dally, unknown.

For Dally, agency means sitting at a bar contemplating the past. On 1066 she
is part of the ‘lively musical-comedy scene here in Paris’ but there will be
no further reference to her current life. Her routine is acknowledged and
then marginalised. As the new section begins another routine activity is
introduced, the ‘annual convention’, inseparable from its location, ‘above
the City in a great though unseen gathering of skyships’ (1083): by
implication, this capitalised] City has been idealised and distanced from
the quotidian, just as the previous section ends with a rather more
generalised view of postwar urban life-as-consumption (1081-1083).

The Garçons de ’71 were last mentioned on 19 when Darby gives the back
story; and the current section is marked by the progress of characters.
Penny Black might be ‘wide-eyed and dewy as when she was a girl’, but she is
now ‘admiral of a fleet of skyships’ (1083). She is not defined here in
relation to men or the family – cf her first appearance when she announces a
recent promotion, ‘four gold stripes 
’ etc (18). If sex equality is
established at the outset, it is a feature of the current section’s
arrangements between the Chums and their new wives (1083). Unlike the
Traverse brothers and their partners, the Chums/girls have a formal
arrangement in the form of ‘the Agreement’ – cf earlier references to
contracts, eg ‘sinister contracts’ to be fought against (418); or Lew’s
‘release from a bad contract’ at the end of Part III (693). Webb’s situation
is similarly defined: he is ‘committed as if by signed contract to die for
his brothers and sisters in the struggle’ (197).


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