School’s out for summer; school’s out for ever.

Last Trump At Malory Towers represents a dramatic, and in many ways unsettling, break with the arc of the series to date. It’s almost as though Blyton had grown frustrated with her self-imposed chronology, cramming in ideas and themes that have barely figured up in the books until now. The result is startlingly anarchic, tearing down the edifice that Blyton has constructed over the previous five books and giving the lie to claims that her work depends on formulaic appeals to base prejudices.

The catalyst for the apocalyptic events of Last Trump is the startling announcement from Mary-Lou that she is pregnant – it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? – which provokes a schism among the girls, who cannot understand how this has happened – after all, Mary-Lou is not married! One faction, led by Darrell and Sally, holds staunchly that it must have been an immaculate conception; the other, following Alicia and Betty, is equally adamant that something more diabolical is afoot.

“It’s perfectly obvious that this is an abomination! How else could it have happened?” asked Alicia sharply. And it was true that none of the girls could think how timid Mary-Lou could possibly be with child. “Well, I think you’re all being beastly to poor little Mary-Lou,” said Darrell.

The girls quickly divide into rival sects, their opposing perspectives inevitably setting them on a collision course. Darrell’s group seclude Mary-Lou in the sanatorium, the better to prepare her for the birth; Alicia’s followers, meanwhile, accept Betty’s offer and set about creating a stronghold in the West Tower. Both sides try to persuade the other Towers to fall in line; the South Tower girls quickly pledge allegiance to their neighbours in the West, while the East Tower remains independent. That standoffishness proves their downfall.

Darrell and Alicia call a summit in the music room, but any hopes of peace are dashed as a heated war of words breaks out. It does not take long for Darrell to snatch Alicia’s pen and smash it underfoot — a clear declaration of hostilities. (To confirm her intentions, she also pushes a first year over a stool). Oh Darrell, that temper will be your downfall! Alicia calls upon the Towers to take sides; when the girls of the East refuse to comply, they meet with a terrible fate, as Alicia’s followers set their Tower on fire; too late, its occupants call on Darrell to help them, but she refuses.

“They could do with learning a lesson!” Darrell thought, as the smell of roasting pork drifted across the quad. “Fancy being so stuck-up as to refuse to take a side!” She decided there and then that no girl from the East Tower would be named to any school team for the rest of the term.

It is at about this point that the teachers, ever watchful, first note that something is going on. Miss Potts is the first upon the scene – and the first to go to her death. Alicia’s upstart cousin June sees opportunity in rising lawlessness and leaps upon the startled Potts; she is followed by a legion of other frustrated girls. Blyton tactfully draws a veil on the ensuing scene.

From there on, the collapse of Malory Towers is all but inevitable as a war breaks out. All sides — including the Southsiders, having broken their pact with Alicia’s Western Front — are hell-bent on recovering Mary-Lou and her unborn child. Pitched battles break out at the entrances to the North Tower, with defenders snatching up makeshift weapons to buy time for Mary-Lou. Lacrosse sticks run with blood; the dorms fill with the dead and dying. Since Matron has been poisoned — after literally getting a taste of her own medicine — there is little medical support for the wounded, and the defenders are outnumbered. There can only be one outcome — or so it seems.

The situation was desperate, Darrell had to admit. Most of the first-formers were gone, and many of the second form. Soon she would have to start sending the older girls to their deaths. And the wound in her side hurt terribly, but not as terribly as the memory of those who had already gone: Daphne, redeemed at last; Connie and Ruth, reunited in death; and of course, Felicity. She had truly served Malory Towers well.

But in a surprise twist, salvation (or damnation?) arrives in the most unlikely of forms: Gwendoline — silly, sentimental Gwendoline; proud, vain Gwendoline; Gwendoline who has spent the two terms since In The Fifth assiduously cultivating the black arts. And Gwendoline is not alone: by her side is the mewling, crazed Maureen, while the unexpected third member of the coven is the American, Zerelda, who has not forgotten her time at Malory Towers during her career as a B-Movie queen (having shot to fame in “Girls’ School Hellcats!”). Gwendoline, so long a hapless figure of fun, finally has the power to control the other girls’ destiny. It takes her no more than a few words and gestures to silence the screaming masses, scorching the earth around the North Tower.

Whose side will she pick? On the one side, there is Darrell: the model Malory Towers girl, everything that Gwendoline is not. On the other, Alicia, whose sharp tongue ensured that hours, days and weeks of torment. Both sides lobby for her favour; but Gwendoline spurns them all. And in the end, she finally proves that she did learn something at Malory Towers after all. “A plague on all your houses,” she screeches, before setting Malory Towers ablaze.

That, inevitably, wakes The Grayling, who rises, shrieking, from the pyre, her eyes glowing and her talons outstretched. The final battle has begun.

To say more would do a disservice to Blyton’s carefully constructed finale. The narrative is relatively sparse, but rich in symbolism and filled with potent imagery. Who can forget Mam’zelle Rougier, her face blackened with soot, blade clamped between her yellowed teeth, promising to “streep ze fat” from the squealing Mam’zelle Dupont? Or the scene in which Bill and Clarissa ride their horses, manes ablaze, to snatch Mary-Lou from June? Mavis, singing her final solo amid the ruins of the North Tower? Or Darrell and Sally, united at last as the flames lick ever closer? Last Term; last call: a fitting conclusion to the series. ##

The quick brown fox…

I have always wanted to type. When I was a little boy, my fingers would dance merrily – if somewhat randomly – across the wipe-clean plastic keyboard of My First Computer. My parents laughed that one day I would be a writer: so great was my desire that I was producing pages of perfectly typeset gibberish before I could properly walk.

When I was a little older, my father unearthed — more or less literally — an ancient  Remington Standard from the cellar, where it had been abandoned by some former resident. I pecked at its keys, finger by finger, even though the ribbon had long since dehydrated beyond use and the spools turned fitfully, if at all. There was magic in the clack-clack of the printer heads on the platen: it was the sound of words being made.

Last year, I turned sixteen, and resolved that the time had come for me to put childish tapping aside in favour of a man’s typing. But who would teach me to walk this path? There was only one possible guide. Mavis Beacon. I was young, too young to acquaint myself with the heady world of stenographers and secretaries; but already I somehow knew, as if by whispers carried on the wind, that Mavis was finest typing tutor to be had.

Eagerly, I placed my order on Amazon.co.uk, thanks to my newly minted debit card, and waited for my parcel to arrive. And waited. And waited. It was unlike Amazon to be so tardy, even if I had selected Super Saver Delivery. Would it never arrive? Would my dream of fluent touch-typing go unfulfilled? I slept restlessly, had nightmarish visions of producing my first novel one painful character at a time.

I should have kept my faith.

One morning, the doorbell rang. I bounded down the stairs to greet the messenger, no doubt carrying in his hand the smile-emblazoned box in which all my hopes were vested. To my surprise, however, what met my eyes was not a surly courier, but a vision in blue. There was an angel on my doorstep, clad in a business-like straight suit whose lines nonetheless promised much.

She beamed widely and nodded at me. “I’m Mavis Beacon. I teach typing. Shall we get started?”

Reader, for all that I fancy myself a writer I am lost for words to express how astonished I was at this turn of events. Truth be told, I had expected no more than a software disc — with an illustrated manual, if I was fortunate. Still less can I express the emotions that Mavis stirred within me: here was a woman who was, yes, undoubtedly beautiful, but also one whose demeanour suggested great accomplishment: frankly, but without pride or hubris. In short: here was a great typist.

The days that followed were perhaps the happiest of my (admittedly brief) life to date. Mavis’ method was exacting, but effective. The entirety of the first day was spent merely positioning my fingers over the keyboard; I do not believe I struck a single key. Yet so enchanting a tutor was Mavis that I uttered not one word of protest.

“Typing begins in the mind, and the heart,” Mavis told me, and I could feel in my own heart that it was true. “You must first learn to become at one with the keyboard.” So great was the conviction with which she spoke these words that I longed for that blessed union to come as quickly as could be — a week, a day, an hour!

The next day, Mavis allowed me to strike my first letter. I remember it was if was yesterday. It was an H, a letter I had previously thought unremarkable but whose brilliance I saw clearly for the first time that day: its upright arms exhorting heaven, its sturdy cross-brace stiffened against all ills.

“Even the longest journey starts with a single step,” said Mavis, as she prepared for her departure. “Today, God willing, you have taken the first step on the most exciting and challenging journey of your life.” She smiled at me, and in her warm brown eyes I saw the promise of the future.

Despite my previous experience, and my assumption that I would use an electronic keyboard, Mavis insisted on talking me through each part of a manual typewriter’s anatomy: spools, ribbon, platen, carriage return bar. “You cannot understand a thing’s nature without understanding how it is made,” she said.

And then, finally, we began to type. She would tap out a phrase, her movements deliberately staccato so that I could observe their patterns and repeat them. At first these phrases were short, but soon they grew more elaborate, and sitting side-by-side our fingers would dance across the keyboard.

It was a tribute to Mavis’ teaching that it rarely took me very long to catch up with her fingerwork. But every time I thought I was on the verge of matching her dexterity, she would increase the tempo, her slim fingers pirouetting like birds in flight. I could only look on in breathless admiration. After she had gone, I would attempt to mimic her balletic movements.

But these efforts usually ended in a confusion of letters, a tangle of knuckles and joints. Even when she was there, I inevitably made mistakes. My fingers betrayed my innocence — and perhaps also my nervousness, conscious as I was of Mavis’ fragrant form beside me. But Mavis was always kind, always encouraging.

“Practice, practice, practice,” she said to me. “No matter how great your skill, you will make nothing of it if you do not practice.”

And so every morning, I would type relentlessly, for hours on end — so much so that my family pleaded with me to stop, fearful that I would contract tendonitis, or carpal tunnel, or worse — but I paid them no heed. I typed, my hair wild and my clothes in disarray; I typed, my hands aflame with agony and my eyes flooding with tears; I typed as though the devil was at my heels and my life in my hands.

I was determined that I would one day make Mavis proud. Only once did I see her lose her patience, one day as she was waiting for her customary pre-lesson cup of tea (Earl Grey, no milk, no sugar). I was struggling with the lid of the biscuit barrel, which seemed to have become stuck fast. I held it in the crook of my arm, wrenching at it with my free hand.

A flash of anger crossed Mavis’ face — a frighteningly incongruous but nonetheless beautiful sight, like lightning flashing through a clear summer sky. She seized the barrel, grabbed me by the wrists.

“Never forget!” she cried. “Never forget that these –” she shook my hands — “these are your instruments! See how they have reddened, how close the blood has drawn to the skin! You must treat them with the greatest of care, for they are the most precious thing that you own. Do you promise me that you will not forget?”

I promised. But I was thinking that it was the pressure of her cool, pearly-tipped fingers that I would never forget.

And so the days went on. I hoped that they would never end. But inevitably, our time together was to be finite, as all mortal relations are. My confidence grew: our fingers raced and danced and sang across the keys. Their clicking patterns never intertwined, but mine followed hers so closely that I thought I would — I must! — catch up: but always, always, she drew away, teasingly darting ahead as I drew close.

Finally,  one afternoon as the setting sun threw long shadows across the room, I embarked on a rallentando stanza, my fingers darting unerringly to their homes on the keyboard like swallows returning to their nests — when I suddenly became aware that I was typing alone. Mavis was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. Their quietude discomfited me greatly. I stopped typing.

I looked at her, then. Her expression was calm, impassive. I knew what she was going to say. And I wished with all her heart that she would not say it. The moment stretched on. Finally I had to break the silence: “Mavis –”

She simply raised one of those marvellously sculpted fingers to her lips.

Then she replaced her hands on the keyboard, typed.

The quick brown fox …

I followed: precisely, accurately, quietly.

“You don’t need me any more,” she said, and without another word, she gathered up her coat, and her briefcase, and left.

I wonder now, what she thought of me. I had hoped for a confession, a declaration of admiration. I had hoped, secretly, that I might be the finest student she had ever had — I even thought I sensed it in her unspoken delight as I followed her fingers across the keys.

But that would not have been Mavis’ way. Hers was a humble path, one dedicated to the art of typing, not to the aggrandisement of herself or others. And that was perhaps her greatest gift to me. Mavis Beacon teaches typing. But she taught me so much more. ##

#1. trim

The sheet of wrapping paper was too big for the parcel.

“Oh sweet Jesus, what are we to do?” said Mother.

“I don’t know, Mother, but we must be brave,” said Father.

“We’re frightened, Mother,” said the children. “We’re frightened, Father.”

#2. snip

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” came the voice.

Rapunzel’s heart beat fast as she lowered her tresses out of the window.

There was a sharp tug as the prince started to climb, and Rapunzel almost cried out.

“Gently, my love,” she called.

“I’ll give you gently,” said the voice, and this time it cackled horribly.

It was not the prince at all, but the crone, who had stolen his voice.

“Oh shit,” said Rapunzel.

#3. clip

It looked bad.

He was far off the trail, which few people used in any case.

There was no way to free his hand from under the rock.

In his desperation, he had pried and scrabbled and scratched at the rock with his free hand, hoping desperately that he might be able to move it, even if only an inch.

Now his nails were in a terrible state.

#4. cut

“A horse!” he cried. “My kingdom for a horse!”

“Here, sire,” said a trusty aide, holding the stallion’s bit with one hand and taking the crown with the other.

No sooner had the former king mounted the horse than it bolted.

He tried to leap free of the saddle, but realised his garments had become hopelessly entangled in the reins.

The horse was heading full-tilt for the enemy.

“A blade!” he cried. “A blade!”

But all he had left to give was the horse.

And nobody wanted it.

#5.

The fate of the human race hung in the balance.

“Rock,” said Kirk.

“Paper,” said the Gorn.

And the Earth died screaming. ##