Embedded Files
Kitty Barne
We'll meet in England tells the story of the Larsen family and their attempt to escape Nazi occupied Norway to England. It was first published in 1942, only 2 years after the occupation began and, read in the war, would have been an uplifting tale of outwitting the Nazis. It is far more than a feel good propaganda story though.
It starts with Hertha's discovery of a boat, damaged but not critically, and a sailor in a cove down the coast. She arranges with him that she will help provide the supplies to repair the boat if he will take her and her brother to England. In many other contexts this would then become a story of children banding together to outwit adults with their parental figures either obstacles or well meaning but hapless half-presences, the seriousness of the situation - the family is under observation due to suspicions about their English mother and their seafaring links - means that is not the case here. The children's mother is a wonderful and active participant, she is a little like Mrs Walker (The best of all possible natives from Swallows and Amazons), but a Mrs Walker forced by circumstances to fully aid her children in their very real deceptions and adventures. This sense of cooperation between adults and children allows for some interesting dynamics where the children's independence varies over time, they have their mother to fall back on which can make them less confident to act alone. This makes their moments of greater independence and ingenuity feel like moments of greater heroism because you have seen their doubts and uncertainties.
Uncle Knut
A character who is rarely uncertain is their younger sister Britta, brilliant and vivacious, she knows more than everyone expects of her and takes delight in proving how useful she can be. Her exuberance is captivating and left me a heady mixture of fascinated, impressed and anxious as she danced around secrets. I felt reading that she and the children's mother had a lot in common while the older children perhaps drew more from their absent fathers. More minor characters are also well observed, my favourite description in the book is of the their Uncle Knut, a quiet, dependable polar bear of a man whose "silence is like other people's talk. You feel you're interrupting him."
A lot of the first part of the book covers various difficulties getting all the necessary supplies and equipment to the boat without alerting the watchful eye of the nearby Mr Pieter who they suspect of being a spy. This leads to lots of situations where they have to talk their way out of a suspicious circumstance and these moments carry a lot of tension but also a certain puzzle as the reader tries frantically to come up with excuses alongside the Larsens - a particularly memorable one of the these is the desperate attempt to invent with a plausible meaning for a C-Anchor. Both Britta and their mother are particularly good at this and there is a lovely scene where mother repeatedly and gaily informs Mr Pieter that she is English as if he was not fully aware of that fact.
Mother talking to Wapping Billy
Wapping Billy (the sailor found in the bay) is also beautifully done. He is a very different character on land than when in his element at sea, something mother sees at once but the children take some time to. The second part of the book features their journey by sea and it is one of the best descriptions of sailing and the sea I have ever read. They set out into a storm and you really feel the terrifying power of the sea, at many times it feels that they are surrounded by angry, turbulant water rather than sailing on top of it. It is a chapter that makes you feel and see how boats gain their personification and how, even when it is trying its best to kill them, sailors will acquire and deep and abiding love of the sea. It also gives a feeling of the terror and the desperation of a small boat in big waves and would lead well into a sensitive discussion of more recent refugee crossings.
The sense of power of the sea is further strengthened by the illustrations of Steven Spurrier, look at the contrasts between the two images below - one with the storm in full flow and the other (which reminds me a little of a picture in Afke's Ten) in the gorgeous aftermath. Spurrier did the original illustrations for Swallows and Amazons before Ransome decided he didn't like them, Ransomes criticism was around the drawing of people which he felt didn't fit his stories and it certainly feels that for his story of children telling stories and exploring his simpler drawings are more fitting. For this however, the feel of an epic journey and the characters involved feel well conveyed by Spurrier, I also love the illustration of Uncle Knut (above).
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