Slowly re-reading my way through Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s lengthy Chalet School series, I was very pleased to reach ‘The Highland Twins at the Chalet School’, which was 16th in the original series. I have a hardback edition that was my mother’s when she was a child and have always loved this particular episode in the saga. I last read it in 2011, and as ever I had forgotten many of the details, even though I recalled the main outline of the story.
Flora and Fiona McDonald are the ‘Highland Twins’ of the title, eleven-year-old girls who have never previously left their small Highland island of Erisay. They lived there with their older sister Shiena, and some brothers, but this, like the two previous books in the series, is set during World War II, and their island has been requisitioned for military purposes.
The McDonald family are quite naive, with little idea of what was going on in the rest of Scotland, let alone the world. The children have been educated at home and have barely met anyone outside their clan. But they have a friend who knows folk at the Chalet School, so it’s decided that the twins will be enrolled there, while Shiena will have to join one of the women’s services. We meet them struggling with trains, not understanding about the dangers of bombing, and dressed incongruously in men’s Highland dress.
Joey Maynard, mother of toddler triplets, welcomes the twins and Shiena and looks after them for a while, until the twins meet some of their future classmates, and decide they would l like to start school. They settle in fairly well, although they come up against the unpleasantness of an older girl who has never really taken on the Chalet School ethos.
However this isn’t just a story of unusual new girls gradually becoming ‘real’ Chalet School girls, as happens in so many of the later books. The twins have a vitally important chart showing secret entrances to their island; if this fell into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. Several chapters of the book involve attempts by others to get hold of it, despite the twins’ insistence that nobody may see it.
There’s also a very moving account involving Joey when she hears some terrible news… I had recalled that, and the outcome, and it still brought tears to my eyes. I had quite forgotten, however, that there are other significant subplots, one involving two girls who have managed to escape from Central Europe, and one involving a great friend of Joey’s, once supremely important and wealthy, now reduced to cleaning to earn her living.
There are some inconsistencies, of course; those familiar with the series call these ‘EBDisms’, where the author forgot some detail, and the editors apparently didn’t notice them. I was surprised that the triplets, nearly two in the first chapter, are nearly three a few chapters later, when only a few weeks have passed. I was also mildly amused that ten years become eleven within the course of a sentence. No doubt there are others, too - and yet it really doesn’t matter. It’s an excellent story, well-told, with three dimensional characters.
This is also interesting from the social history point of view, written as contemporary fiction in 1942 when war was raging. So gas masks and blackouts are normal, as are men being away for lengthy periods, with poor communication, and teenagers of 18 being called up rather than going to college or starting jobs. The dangers of casual talk are emphasised within the story, and those reading when it was first published would have been able to identify strongly with the situations described.
But although I’m shocked to realise this book is now eighty years old, the people feel believable, and I could identify with several of them. It’s probably best to read this after at least a few of the earlier books - in particular ‘The Chalet School in Exile’, another of my favourites - as so many people in this book appeared in earlier ones. I don’t know if today’s teenagers would enjoy this series; I discovered it as a young teenager in the 1970s, but that was still a pre-digital era, and boarding school books for girls were popular.
A slight word of warning to the sensitive: a word now considered a racial slur is used a couple of times in the context of working very hard. Back in the 1940s this phrase was used (indeed, I recall hearing it from as late as the 1970s) without intending prejudice or hate; if anything it was expressing admiration. But the phrase could be shocking to anyone unaware of its former use.
However, with those provisos, to anyone who likes this series, or this style of teenage school fiction, I would recommend this book highly. The Armada edition was abridged, although it told most of the story. It was republished in full by Girls Gone By some years ago but prices online tend to be high - it's worth asking around if you would like this book, or wait for GGB to reprint it.
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