Concluding

Concluding

First edition cover
Author	Henry Green
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Publisher	Hogarth Press
Publication date	1948
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)

Concluding is a novel by British writer Henry Green first published in 1948. It is set entirely on the expansive and idyllic premises of a state-run institution for girls somewhere in rural England and chronicles the events of one summer's day—a Wednesday, and "Founder's Day"—in the lives of the staff, the students, and several other people living on the grounds. During that day, two girls go missing.

The school has been run since its inception ten years earlier by two elderly educators, Mabel Edge and Hermione Baker, who are regarded by many as old spinsters hopelessly out of touch with reality, especially with what their teenage charges really think and feel. The 300 or so students are virtually indistinguishable from one another, a fact which is stressed by their names all starting with the letter M: Margot, Marion, Mary, Melissa, Merode, Midget, Mirabel, Moira. Their budding but suppressed sexuality—they are all between 16 and 18 years of age and "going to be attractive"—is constantly alluded to in the novel. ("They're only children, the girls I mean, and sex is unconscious at their age. It's such a temptation for a man.")

Of the teaching staff, only few characters are mentioned. There is Miss Winstanley, young, colourless, and secretly in love with one of the few male teachers at the academy, economics tutor Sebastian Birt. Birt, however, a short and stout man in his late twenties, is having an affair with Elizabeth Rock, a 35-year-old woman recovering from a nervous breakdown who temporarily also lives on the school grounds, in her grandfather's cottage. That man, 76-year-old Mr Rock, is a retired scientist who has been granted the privilege to live there for the remainder of his life for past services rendered to the State. The ageing Rock, who is referred to as "the sage" by some (including the narrator) and as "Gapa" by his granddaughter, spends his time mainly with, and for, his pets—his albino sow, Daisy, his cat, Alice, and his goose, Ted. He describes himself as "a bit stiff about the joints these days", he has some difficulty climbing steps, has poor eyesight, is deaf in one ear and almost deaf in the other, and has recently had problems with his memory. In addition, one of his idiosyncrasies consists in putting all the post he gets in a big trunk without opening any of it, ever.

Edge, one of the principals, has for some time wanted to thoroughly "spring-clean" the whole place and get rid of Rock, his granddaughter, and Birt, partly to secure the sage's cottage for the use of additional school staff. In other matters, she is more hesitant. When in the morning some girls report Mary and Merode missing, pointing out that neither of their beds has been slept in, Edge turns out to be very reluctant to use the official channels to inform relatives, the school supervisor, or the local police. Naturally it occurs to her and her colleague Baker that Mary and Merode might have eloped with two young men ("At the station much of their time was taken up with young women adrift, who, after fourteen days, returned brown and happy from a fortnight with a boy by the ocean."), but, rather than fearing the worst, they assume the girls will be back for that night's entertainment, a ball in honour of the academy's founder—without men of course. At the same time Edge turns down some of the staff's requests to be allowed to go swimming in the nearby lake, which is interpreted as a sure sign that one of the girls' bodies could turn up any time floating in the water.