Reading Room XIII - Third Friday of October by Dana Austin Marsh

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Title: Third Friday of October
Author: Dana Austin Marsh
Link to story or zine/ProsLib info: Motet Opus in B & D, The Circuit Archive, ProsLib CD
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle

I could have sworn I'd recced this story before, because it's long been in my list of favourites, but if I have I can't find it... so here we go, fresher than I'd thought it would be! *g*

When the story begins, we quickly learn that the lads have been separated, that Doyle has left CI5 and is (with hints of unhappiness) married, and Bodie doesn't seem to be anywhere in the picture. Bodie, it turns out, has been working for CI5 as usual - our first glimpse of him is when Cowley congratulates him on a successful op, and gives him a long weekend off. Marsh has immediately made me want to know more - why in the world aren't they together? Why's Doyle left CI5, and since he has, why doesn't he know that Bodie is still there? Why, why, why, and what is going on?

Answers aren't long coming. Jilted by his wife because she has to work when they're due to go off to a holiday village run by an old CI5 mate on a second honeymoon, Doyle decides to go on his own anyway, and to his surprise, Bodie is there... It's the beginning of such a bitter-sweet story - Doyle left CI5 to get married, Bodie saw him off on his honeymoon as a best made would, and then vanished from his life because all that time he'd been in love with Doyle, and the only thing that had stopped him making a pass at him was their partnership in the job. With that restraint gone, he knows that he wouldn't be able to resist, and that he'd ruin Doyle's new life as a result - the only answer is to cut himself off completely.

Doyle, being Doyle, immediately traps Bodie into giving him some answers, and Bodie having his own reckless streak when caught in a corner, decides he might as well give Doyle the real one:

Slipping his hands around Doyle's slim waist, he leaned forward and sealed his mouth to lips that had tormented him, waking and sleeping, for far too long. Assumgin that in a mere moment he would be in need of urgent dental care, Bodie put everything he had into that one moment, using all his experience, sensuality and hopeless yearning to kiss Doyle as he had never been kissed in his life.
Having decided to carry on kissing Doyle until Ray himself put a stop to it, Bodie found himself caught in a fantasy that went on almost long enough to convince him that the passive creature in his arms was real...

Doyle has never thought about Bodie like that before, but now that he does everything seems to fall together, and all the tinges of sadness in his own marriage can be forgotten for one brief, blissful weekend - a step out of the reality of our lives. A time for something that should have happened long ago.

They part - "I'm gonna leave whilst you're asleep. Don't know that I could..." His throat closed up, trapping the rest. - but Bodie resolves to come back the next year, and when Doyle's wife chooses the third Friday in October to go and help a friend with her newborn baby, and suggests that Doyle goes to spend another weekend with that mate of yours. Jack Cramer, wasn't it?, Doyle gives in to temptation, the chance to wallow in his memories...where those memories had been made.

And thus begins a regular date - on the weekend of the third Friday in October, Bodie and Doyle meet at the holiday village and spend just two days out of 356 together. We watch them falling hopelessly and properly in love, we hear about their lives apart, and wanting, and we share their joys and tragedies, until it all gets too much, and... Well, I hope you've read the ending, but just in case you haven't, I'm not going to describe it here. *g*

I adore the heart of this story - a love between them that doesn't fade away with the years, that is so much more than lust, that pulls them back together again and again, and is the only real comfort that either of them have. I can't help but read on and on to find out what happens to them in the end - surely they stay together, but how? How can they possibly? - and that's the kind of story I love, a story that keeps me reading, and keeps me wanting more, just as the lads do...

So... what do you think of all this? Can you see Doyle leaving CI5 to get married? Is he the marrying kind? Are either of them the kind to have children? Do you think they'd stick to such principles, once made, like this? Or would they give in to the inevitability of it and leave wives and girlfriends for each other much sooner, more blatantly? Does this sort of story make you want to keep reading, or frustrate you to the very core?

Comments

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

What an utterly romantic and cheesy crap! A new version of the The Thorn Birds - oh dear!
I thought.
It really shouldn't work!

- but it does! :-)
It's a beautiful story! Sometimes even heartbreakingly beautiful. But always very satisfying! :-)
No matter what, they survive the year, with all the loneliness and the guilt, and during these three days in October, they regain the strength to go on with their life.
Each meeting/year is special. And especially the moments when they find solace in the other one, are very well written. Never 'cheesy'! :-)

" Can you see Doyle leaving CI5 to get married?"
No, not immediately! Maybe after some severe incidents.

" Is he the marrying kind? Are either of them the kind to have children?"
Yes. And both would be great part time fathers! ;-)

" Do you think they'd stick to such principles, once made, like this?"
Yes, I think they would...

" Or would they give in to the inevitability of it and leave wives and girlfriends for each other much sooner, more blatantly?"
I think he was quite content with his wife. Not tooo happy, but ok. And he loved his son. I can't see him leaving them. Sorry!

Btw - my solution for it all would have been to live in a happy family with Doyle, and his wife, and his lover, and his son... *g*


Thank you for causing me to read this "romantic stuff"! ;-)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

What an utterly romantic and cheesy crap!
No, no Firle - tell us what you really think...

I suppose it depends on what you call "romantic" (I'd say this was), "cheesy" (there are certainly a few lines in the story that are cheesy), and "crap" - (definitely not this).

So what was it, to you, that said "utterly romantic and cheesy crap" about this? Was it just the idea of it? Because you then go on and describe it as a beautiful story, so...?

You seem to automatically be defining "romantic" as "crap" though - when you say "romantic", what do you mean by it? (I suspect we may mean different things - my definition of it isn't negative at all, though I don't particularly like "romance novels", which are something different, to me...)

I've got to admit that I can't really see either lad as a father, much as they both seem to like kids well enough in various eps. I don't think they'd have the selflessness to be properly good fathers, and I suspect they'd be more absent than anything else as "part time fathers"... I can imagine Doyle perhaps wanting to try - but I don't think it would work...

Btw - my solution for it all would have been to live in a happy family with Doyle, and his wife, and his lover, and his son... *g*
So you might have liked Elizabeth Holden's Forever True then, which is another of my favourites?

ETA - it was inspired by the play Same Time Next Year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same_Time,_Next_Year) by Bernard Slade, by the way - not The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, which I've noticed before you're fairly well down on!

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

"What an utterly romantic and cheesy crap! / It's a beautiful story!"
That's the 'before' and 'after'. ;-)
Of course I've heard a lot about the story, and I never thought that it would work for me.

"I've got to admit that I can't really see either lad as a father, much as they both seem to like kids well enough in various eps. I don't think they'd have the selflessness to be properly good fathers, and I suspect they'd be more absent than anything else as "part time fathers"..."
I certainly don't want them to scrub their toughness, their 'macho behaviour' if you want, on problems of everyday life. You know childhood illnesses, school problems, struggles with the neighbours and such things...
So the way Bodie was a father in this story, is perfect for me. ;-)

I'll try Forever True. Thanks for the tip!

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

I agree with the part time father bit but don't see any of them married, other than, maybe, in order to give their name (and support) to a child. Doyle could be tempted (and was) but not for good or not for long.

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

"...but don't see any of them married..."
Well, let's say that I wouldn't trust any of them to make the right choice! ;-)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

But why/not?!

[potztausend.livejournal.com]

Huh... that's a 130 pages story, I just found it!
http://www.azurite.ca/stories/forevertrue.pdf

[(Anonymous)]

It's me. Firlefanzine. Can't log it at the moment... Don't know why...

It's a pity that it's a PDF file, though!

[potztausend.livejournal.com]

Why? I don't mind if it's a pdf or a word.doc...

You are looking funny with that paper bag on your head, Firle!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's nice to see that she has it up at her website now - you know, I could have sworn we posted that one as part of discoveredonalj or the like, but I can't at all find it... Glad it's up, anyway! *g*

[heliophile-oxon.livejournal.com]

I ... have mixed feelings about this story. I'd seen the film with Burstyn and Alda so I knew the structure beforehand (though not the ending, obviously) and I think it was perhaps a little on the tortuous side getting the lads to fit that structure. I could see either or both of them as loving but definitely part-time, largely absentee fathers, for example, but I couldn't see either of them leaving CI5 and the other without even more motivation than we see here.

But I think my main objection is to Doyle's wife and his relationship with her - I don't like the way this story makes him look so utterly unsympathetic! I mean I know he's not exactly a feminist (understatement of the year) but this story makes him out to be practically a throwback! I suppose I just like to imagine my Doyle as a bit more clued up and aware/sensitive ... and the mysterious illness is too hand-waved. Make it a real illness, instead of having Doyle "forget" the name (I don't think a parent would)!

There are some aspects of it that work well, though, so once we've accepted the set-up then the actual meetings and developing relationship are great.

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

i
I read the story long ago and didn't like it though it's so well written and a page turner but the ending was so made up (the child died of course: I hate this sort of cheap cop out).

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

"...but the ending was so made up (the child died of course..."
I never thought that the death of Andrew was 'made up'!
It's a story - but things like that happen...!

Ok - how would be a possible end without that?

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hmmn - I don't see the death of the child as a "cheap cop out", but as a tragedy that was part of the story. Anyone can write a story about two men who have a part-time affair and... then what? Then it peters out? Then it just carries on forever? Then there's a big row and they have to choose between wife/lover? This could just as easily have gone the other way - split the lads up forever as Doyle tried to "fix things" with his wife, made Bodie feel so guilty that he couldn't continue with an affair he was ready to end anyway, etc etc. But we don't write about the ordinary, dull things, we write about the extraordinary things, and I think including the child was one of those...

The one bit of the ending that did feel "made up" was the near-accident, though - that felt rather tacked-on to me, and I can only assume that it was in the original film and so had to be included here...

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

The death of the child is really too pat and, worse, it simply solves, much too easily, the problem by suppressing one term of the dilemma, which is the very topic of the story. Could they go on living parallel lives, not once a year but all the time? Well, that's a typical woman's question: most men have absolutely no qualm about it. You perfectly can have a happy family life on one side, and a secret love affair on the other, those are just two different universes; in other times and places there wouldn't even have to be secret: the wife was for housekeeping and begotting legitimate heirs, the male friends or (in some societies) lovers were for the serious and equal relationships. The story should have dealt honestly with those uncomfortable issues.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I can understand how you feel the child's death is "too pat", because it certainly does solve a problem for them, but I think it's been set up well enough that I can go with it. Doyle's not happy in his marriage, and really it's only the child who keeps him there - perhaps a last-ditch attempt from both of them to make the marriage a success, which is never a good idea. It would have been easier if they'd just got a divorce, which would be a simple solution these days - even back in the eighties - but the death of the child makes it a more poignant story for me. Doyle is actually struggling against something he knows is wrong - the affair with Bodie - by trying to make a go of it with his wife and child, which he believes is more honourable. But life doesn't always work out like that, and he's not rewarded with being able to make it right through acting honourably, even that goes wrong for him.

I think you're quite right that perhaps even the majority of men would have no qualms at the thought of an affair, or adultery, but I don't think that's true of all men, and I can see Doyle as someone who wouldn't feel comfortable with it - in fact in canon he says something about not messing around with married women - and I can see Bodie, truly loving him, wanting to respect that, rather than lose Doyle completely to his wife. So to me the uncomfortable issues are dealt with perfectly honestly through the specific characterisation of the lads - but of course we all have our own take on that, so... *g*

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Ah, interesting - I can imagine that knowing the original source material could well make a difference - what were the tortuously squeezed bits, if you don't mind my asking?

I can see Doyle leaving CI5 to get married, bearing in mind what we see in Discovered in a Graveyard and so on - we know he's fed up with many aspects of his job. Leaving to start his own gym grates on me a bit though - if I can justify his leaving CI5 because he's fed up, then I can only really be comfortable with him leaving to do something that he thinks might be more useful or meaningful for the world, and starting a gym just doesn't seem to be enough for him, somehow...

I don't remember thinking that Doyle was any more unsympathetic to his wife than his character/the story perhaps merited... I do have the impression that they're not actually happy together, and that they're probably both to blame. She chooses to work rather than go on their second honeymoon, for instance, so I don't find her entirely sympathetic in her own right - that might colour my view of his actions... I agree that Doyle would probably remember the name of his child's illness though, even if it is apparently incredibly rare... and he's certainly aware/sensitive about the child!

I wonder if I'd find it harder to accept the set-up if I'd seen the film already - was there a sick child in the film, by the way? With a specific illness?

[anna060957.livejournal.com]

RL is occupying my time at the moment to the exclusion of almost everything Pros related apart from 10 minutes each evening with the Kindle working my way through Big Bang. However, I have read this and LOVED IT! With no knowledge of an original on which this appears to be based, I was happy to just read, and read and read and not put it down. It is so bittersweet, but with a happy ending.
Yes, I think Doyle is the marrying kind (and Bodie definitely not!)
Children - yes for both, but with very different relationships. I think Doyle would enjoy being a dad, but any offspring of Bodie's is likely to be unplanned and possibly unknown [as indeed she is in this story]! This, if I remember correctly, is set in the Pros timeline, ie, late 70s/early 80s when men (sorry if this seems to be stereotyping) had much less to do with children on an emotional level than they perhaps do now and I can see Doyle's behaviour in relation to the illnes of his child as very typical of that time. Doyle (both canon and fanon) tends to be portrayed as the ethical, moral one and that is why he stays with his wife. If the roles ahd been reversed (although I don't think Bodie would ever marry, but he might set up home with a woman), Bodie would not feel the compulsion to stay ... he's simply leave his partner for Doyle and pay cash for the consequences.
Thanks for the recce - another one I must re-read very soon!!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Lol - NaNoWriMo is occupying my time at the moment, so sorry I didn't manage to reply last night!

Oddly enough, I almost think it's the other way around with kids and our lads, from little things that happen in the eps. Although Doyle runs off to play football with kids a few times, he's very much teasing them, and there's little sympathy in his voice when he roars at them to "go away" (granted from a bomb that could go off with one false bounce of Bodie in the car!). Bodie, on the other hand, seems ever so natural with the kids when he's being substitute teacher in You'll Be Alright, and he's very solicitous of them when laddie's nearly been run over - defends them from their mum being cross even, buys them an ice cream each, etc etc. I have a feeling that actually Bodie would make a pretty good dad, genuinely interested in how the kids feel (maybe in the same way he is with Frances Cottingham?), whereas Doyle might think he wanted to be a dad, but actually be alot less patient about it...

And I don't think it's stereotyping to report a fact - men were expected to have less to do with children in the '70s and even the '80s (though it was changing then, in my experience anyway). It wasn't every father (and actually mine stayed home and looked after us whilst mum worked, cos he was an older dad during the recession in 1970s Australia), but it was the expectation - anything else was considered odd, and emasculating... But wait - how do you mean that fits in with Doyle's behaviour about the illness of his child? Oh, cos he couldn't remember the name of the illness?

All very interesting to think about though - thank you!

[merentha13.livejournal.com]

This is one of my favorite stories! I don't think Doyle would leave CI5 right off the bat and I agree with heliophile_oxon about Doyle's attitude towards his wife and marraige - but none of that mattered in the end. I loved the story, the hurt/comfort, the coming together again. It was all so well written. The only thing I question is their last "escape" at the very end of the story. What was that all about? Why was it needed? I didn't understand its inclusion - it wasn't necessary.

Thanks for the review - it prompted me to read this one again and remember how much I enjoy it.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure Doyle would have been leaving CI5 "right off the bat" though - we've seen lots of things in the eps that show he was doubting what he did there - Discovered in a Graveyard the culmination of these, and he looks so much older and more worn in the last series, I can definitely see he might be jaded enough to leave if he thought he was in love.

And with his wife - I couldn't feel particularly sympathetic towards her myself, when she ditched their second honeymoon in order to work. We never hear what she does, except that Doyle sympathises that his work was once important too, but I don't get the impression that it's something like CI5, where she couldn't have refused the overtime. I suspect that colours my view of her from the start - Doyle might not seem to be a perfect husband, even before having an affair with Bodie, but Kathy doesn't seem to be a perfect wife, either...

I do agree about their "escape" at the end though, it felt very tacked on - I wonder if it was in the original film, and so the author felt she had to include it too...?

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to not caring for this story at all. For one, I can't see Bodie putting up with a very part-time lover for all those years. In the movie it's based on, both people are married, so neither is alone, but by having only Doyle married, Bodie comes off as almost pathetic, waiting loyally on the sidelines until his lover needs him.

And I agree with others about the child dying. How very convenient.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Ah - we clearly have a different opinion of people who are single! I don't see Bodie as at all pathetic, for not having any other relationship whilst he sees Doyle just once a year, I see that as loyal and honourable and romantic - and absolutely normal if someone was in what they considered a permanent relationship!

The child dying didn't bother me either (well, you know what I mean!) - it was obviously a plot device, but it's not as if it never happens, or couldn't. It was perhaps a bit over-dramatised, the disease didn't need to be "rare" to have the same tragic effect, but I presume that was part of the original story. We don't tell stories about ordinary, everyday happenings, after all, we tell them about the ultimate tragedies, or excitements, or comedies. if the child hadn't died, it would have been less of a story in this case, I think - it adds a tinge of the extraordinary to the situation, it helps to make the story...

It sounds like you've seen the original film - was there a child dying in it? Did you feel the same way about it then, that it was just "convenient"?

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Ah - we clearly have a different opinion of people who are single! I don't see Bodie as at all pathetic, for not having any other relationship whilst he sees Doyle just once a year, I see that as loyal and honourable and romantic - and absolutely normal if someone was in what they considered a permanent relationship!

Lol, I suppose our opinions of single people are different, though I can only go by how I felt when I was single (I didn't meet the guy who would become my husband until I was 32.) There's no way I would have put up with this sort of situation. Mostly, because I think I would have started resenting the guy for wanting to have his cake and eating it, too. It's one thing if both people are married—I know of such a situation that's been going on for almost forty years (though they certainly see each other more than once a year!) But to have a life where you only see the person you love once a year, while knowing that they're off enjoying their family? No, I don't see that as loyal and honourable and absolutely not romantic. Just sad.

The child dying didn't bother me either (well, you know what I mean!) - it was obviously a plot device, but it's not as if it never happens, or couldn't. It was perhaps a bit over-dramatised, the disease didn't need to be "rare" to have the same tragic effect, but I presume that was part of the original story. We don't tell stories about ordinary, everyday happenings, after all, we tell them about the ultimate tragedies, or excitements, or comedies. if the child hadn't died, it would have been less of a story in this case, I think - it adds a tinge of the extraordinary to the situation, it helps to make the story...

For me, it was the author's way of having a happy ending—well, happy for Bodie. If the child hadn't died, Doyle would probably never have left. That's what I mean about it being convenient. Doyle's wife just getting sick of him and throwing him out just doesn't have the same ring.

It sounds like you've seen the original film - was there a child dying in it? Did you feel the same way about it then, that it was just "convenient"?

In the movie, the Alan Alda character loses a son, but the son is already grown and dies in Viet Nam. It has no bearing on the relationship between Alda and Burstyn, at least not as far as their being together. Also, I found the movie more believable because they start out having the affair because of a physical attraction. They don't know each other, aren't in love with each other. That comes later, though both are very much in love with their spouses (unlike, it seems to me, Doyle, who's more of a martyr.) Even when Alda's wife does die (the characters are in their 60s or 70s by then,) Burstyn refuses to leave her husband. The movie ends with them agreeing to continue their affair, but I can't help but feel that Alda could very well find someone else in time... if he has the time, that is. *g*

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

It was too "brokeback mountain-y" for me and I disliked that particular movie. I'm not a fan of adultry either so for me, anybody who cheats is not somebody I respect. I don't find that romantic, only pathetic.

DAM is a fabulous writer though and I love many of her stories. She can weave a tale that I want to read even when the subject matter isn't something I like. That takes talent.