A Deceptively Simple Story - Thunder and Lightnings by Jan Mark

 

Jacket by Jim Russell

Jan Mark's first novel, Thunder and Lightnings, was published in 1976 and won the Carnegie Medal in 1977. It is, for several reasons, one of my favourite children's books. It's not perfect—Jan's scorn for certain idiocies of the English education system occasionally bursts out a little too obviously—but it is a condensed, often funny, and quietly moving study of an encounter between two boys from very different backgrounds: Andrew the child of middle-class, educated professionals, an incomer to the Norfolk countryside, and Victor,   a Norfolk farm-worker's son.

I lived in the Norfolk countryside for forty years, and my mother lives there still. In fact, until recently she had her hair done every week in Coltishall, the village that gives its name to RAF Coltishall where the Lightning aircraft in the story are based. Generations of my mother's family come from Norfolk and I am still amazed that after such short acquaintance Jan Mark got Norfolk so right. She got it even more right in Handles, her second Carnegie winner a few years later.

In Thunder and Lightnings we see Norfolk and its inhabitants mainly through the eyes of Andrew, the incomer. More especially, we see Victor and his family through Andrew's eyes, and Andrew gets things more than a little wrong. Andrew's distorted perception is symbolised by Victor's clothing. When Andrew first sees Victor at school his 'appearance worried Andrew because he was sure there was something wrong with him. He was hideously swollen about the body but very thin in the face . . . the boy's spindly legs seemed hardly strong enough to support the rest of him.'

Victor's clothes are a kind of disguise. Victor and school don't get on. He has trouble reading and spelling but when it comes to aircraft he knows all there is to know. Andrew, astonished that he knows so much, says: 'I thought you didn't like learning things.'

'I didn't learn them,' said Victor. 'I can't learn things, but anything I want to know sticks.'

Andrew attempts to help Victor; he feels sorry for him. Victor's parents seem to Andrew to treat him very badly. Andrew thinks Victor needs help, but Victor has already started to find his own strategies for survival. Andrew's mother can see this, just as she is perceptive about Andrew's own feelings, and through her comments we realize that Victor is growing up rather faster than Andrew. 

This encounter between middle-class incomers and natives is potentially uncomfortable territory, and there is no doubt that Andrew is almost condescending to Victor at times, assuming that because he doesn't read or write very well that he can't possibly know as much as he does about aeroplanes. Andrew's parents are not so quick to judge Victor's family though, and his mother understands Victor a lot better than Andrew does. 

Andrew himself has had a tough time at school in the city and been bullied for 'talking posh', and it seems as though he hasn't had a real friend before, so that his anxiety that he might be losing his friend when he puts his foot in it repeatedly is painfully real, but there's something else being lost here, and I think it's childhood.

Illustration by Jim Russell

Lots of children have obsessions. Andrew's is with racing cars, and Victor's is with military aircraft, and in particular with the English Electric Lighting. My grandson has a particular interest in trains, and as we know from people like Rod Stewart and Neil Young (both, in case you didn't know, life-long model railway enthusiasts) these childhood obsessions can last a lifetime. But if there's one central message in this book it's that all things pass. The Lightnings are about to be replaced by newer aircraft and Victor is very upset about it—so upset that Andrew fears he may not want his company any more. In this he is wrong as usual, and Andrew's mum is correct when she says: 'Why shouldn't you see him. He'll be around when he feels like it. Strange though it may seem, he'll get used to the idea of the Jaguars.You'll be going to Coltishall to see them instead. It's no good telling him that now, though. He wouldn't believe you.'

The Lightning was an interceptor, designed to protect NATO airspace from intruders and capable of flying at twice the speed of sound. In a way the action of this book takes place at the heart of the cold war, where military planes fly from airfields all around East Anglia, but as Andrew and Victor read the comics Victor hoards beneath his bed, with their stories of Mitch Mulligan, the ace mechanic of 999 squadron and Steve Stone, the ace pilot of 777 squadron, there is little sense of the reality of war. Victor says he likes graveyards, and there's a scene where describes how 'When I was a littl'un I used to play in Pallingham churchyard. I used to pretend the gravestones were little houses.'

A few chapters later, after a depressing visit to the airfield where hardly any planes seem to be flying, they visit another graveyard where British and German airmen are buried. There is a memorial to 'Ein Deutscher Soldat.' Andrew says: 'Steve Stone ought to be here somewhere.'

'Steve Stone? Him in the comic? What's he got to do with it?'

'Nothing,' said Andrew. 'That's the point. Steve Stone and Mitch Mulligan, they're all explosions and crashes and people getting blown up, but you never see anybody dead. There are never any pictures like this. Ein Deutscher Soldat. In all those stories he's just the Hun and serve him right.'

'Perhaps they don't want people to think what really happened,' said Victor. 'War's supposed to be fun.'

'It's only fun in comics,' said Andrew. 'But in real life it hurts just as much whichever side you die on. And you're just as dead afterwards.'

'Let's go back to the road,' said Victor. 'I don't like that, here. It's sad.'

There's a lot going on in Thunder and Lightnings in a short, easy-to-read book with short chapters. It's often very funny, and while it is about the loss of innocence it's also about finding friendship. Ultimately it's an optimistic book, though I can't quite figure out whether the reason I like it so much is because it takes me back to my own time in Norfolk when my children were growing up.

Highly recommended!

Originally published on ABBA June 6th 2022