Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Last Strikes

This, again, is not a proper ‘Pregnancy Trap’ post with a long-form focus on one or two traps that define a particular work. Here is another hurried catalogue of all the “coercive love” relationships in the Strike-Ellacott mysteries: it follows the ‘Rowling Pregnancy Traps: First Four Strikes‘ post in which I reviewed the several traps encountered from Cuckoo to Lethal White. This post covers the most recent three novels in the series, Troubled Blood to Running Grave. I have written longish posts about the ‘Big Four’ Pregnancy Traps that play defining roles in the Harry Potter novels (Merope and Tom, Sr.), in Casual Vacancy (Krystal and Fats), in Cursed Child (Bellatrix and Tom, Jr.), and in the Strike series (Leda and Jonny); with this post and one other that surveys The Ickabog, Christmas Pig, and Beedle the Bard, I’ll wrap up this Pregnancy Trap Golden Thread in an article on the Substack page and a ‘Rowling Studies’ podcast for subscribers before moving on to the next Golden Thread ‘common denominator’ in her work.

Book-by-book, then, the Pregnancy Traps to be found in Troubled Blood, Ink-Black Heart, and Running Grace!

Troubled Blood

[See the first comment beneath this post for the Pregnancy Trap in Strike5 that I left out of the first version of this piece, the most important Trap of this specific book, of the Strike-Ellacott series, and perhaps of everything Rowling has written.]

• Sarah Shadlock’s Trapping Matt Cunliffe

Readers learn in Lethal White with Robin’s discovery of the diamond earring in the Cunliffe conjugal bed that Matt and Sarah have been sleeping together. It comes as little surprise because since Career of Evil Matt’s old friend from University has been “shit stirring,” i.e., implying when she and the engaged and then married couple are together that Robin must be attracted to Cormoran and sexually tempted by him. This is not to mention, of course, Rowling having revealed in Strike3 that Robin’s fiancée had slept with Sarah while at Uni after Ms Ellacott was raped at her school and been unavailable to him at home due to her year-long agoraphobia.

The slow-release of Sarah’s long-term plan to hook herself the husband she wants, Matt Cunliffe not Tom Turvey, though, comes at last in Troubled Blood, Rowling’s wondrous fifth Strike-Ellacott mystery and perhaps the best single novel she has written. She has Robin learn via a phone call with Shadlock’s furious fiancée Turvey in a crowded Christmas season department store that Sarah has moved on to (moved in with?) Matt; she inwardly reviewed that conversation in her head while sitting with Strike in the store’s cafe:

A waiter had arrived at the table. When both had ordered coffee, and Robin some toast, each relapsed into silence. Robin was looking away from the window toward the shoppers stocking up on fancy groceries for Christmas down on the shop floor and re-running Tom Turvey’s outburst in her head. The aftershocks were still hitting her. Four weeks before my fucking wedding. It must have been called off. Sarah had left Tom for Matthew, the man she’d wanted all along, and Robin was sure she wouldn’t have left Tom unless Matthew had shown himself ready to offer her what Tom had: diamonds and a change of name. I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been fucking around. Everyone had been unfaithful, in Tom’s opinion, except poor Tom… so Matthew must have told his old friend that she, Robin, had been sleeping with someone else (which meant Strike, of course, of whom Matthew had been perennially jealous and suspicious from the moment Robin had gone to work for him). And even now that Tom knew about Matthew and Sarah, after his old friend’s duplicity and treachery had been revealed, Tom still believed the lie about Robin and Strike. Doubtless he thought his current misery was all Robin’s fault, that if she hadn’t succumbed to Strike, the domino effect of infidelity would never have been started. (Part Three, Chapter 24)

Rowling rolls out the Pregnancy Trap that Shadlock had been compelled to set only after the final divorce mediation between the long-separated Cunliffes. Ellacott deduces that Sarah had deliberately become ‘preggers’ to secure the vacillating Matt:

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “It was an accident.”

Was it hell, thought Robin. Sarah had always known how to get what she wanted. Robin realized at last how long a game Sarah had played: always present, giggling, flirting, prepared to settle for Matthew’s best friend to keep him close. Then, as her clutch tightened, but Matthew threatened to slip through it, there’d been the diamond earring she’d left in Robin’s bed and now, still more valuable, a pregnancy to make sure of him, before he could enter a dangerous state of singledom. Robin had a strong suspicion that this was what had lain behind the two postponements of mediation. Had a newly hormonal and insecure Sarah made scenes, frightened of Matthew coming face to face with Robin while he hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted either the baby or its mother?

“And she wants to be married before she has it?”

“Yeah,” said Matthew. “Well, so do I.” (Part Five, Chapter 55)

“A pregnancy to make sure of him”… Once again, Rowling uses “coercive love,” a pregnancy trap in a key story relationship. The successful trap that secures clueless Matt to Sarah, effectively closes the Cunliffe story-line in the Strike novels (if hope springs eternal that the man Louise Freeman refers to as the “flubberworm” will make a cameo of some kind in the last three books; he has to harbor thoughts of revenge against Strike, no?).

• Janice Beattie’s Failed Trap of Her Son’s Father

During Strike’s end of novel confrontation with the “Poisoner Granny” in her flat’s Red Room, Rowling reveals that the serial killer had years before tried to win an engagement ring from her beaux by becoming pregnant with his child. Strike has asked Beattie why she killed people after sharing with her that her son Kevin will be testifying against her, that he will be sharing in court the times his mother tried to poison his father, himself, and his child, her grand-daughter. Rowling lets her readers know only then that Janice’s wedding band was a front and that she had tried to win her husband by becoming pregnant:

“—left because he thought you were doing things to his meals, too. Kevin used to think his father was making it all up. But after our chat last night, I think he’s seeing things very differently. He’s ready to come over and testify against you.”

Janice gave a small convulsive jerk. For almost a minute there was silence.

“You’re recording this,” she whispered at last, looking at the mobile lying on the arm of Strike’s chair.

“I am, yeah,” said Strike.

“If you turn that off, I’ll talk to you.”

“I’ll still be able to testify to whatever you tell me.”

“I’m sure a lawyer would tell me not to let meself be recorded, though.”

“Yeah,” Strike acknowledged, “you’re probably right.”

He picked up the mobile, turned it to face her so she could watch, switched off the recording, then laid it down on the small coffee table beside the chocolates, the empty phial, the syringe, the cellophane and the hairdryer.

“Why d’you do it, Janice?”

She was still stroking the underside of her wedding ring.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “I just… like it.”

Her eyes wandered over the wall of photographs.

“I like seeing what ’appens to them, if they take poison or too many drugs. Sometimes I like ’elping ’em and ’aving them be grateful, and sometimes I like watching ’em suffer, and sometimes I like watching ’em go…” A prickle ran up the back of Strike’s neck. “I don’t know why,” she said again. “I sometimes fink it’s because I ’ad a bang on the ’ead, when I was ten. My dad knocked me downstairs. I was out for fifteen minutes. Ever since then, I’ve ’ad ’eadaches…’Ead trauma can do fings to you, you know. So maybe it’s not my fault, but… I dunno…

“Wiv me granddaughter,” said Janice, frowning slightly, “I just wanted ’er gone, honestly… spoiled and whiny… I don’t like kids,” she said, looking directly back at Strike. “I’ve never liked kids. I never wanted ’em, never wanted Kev, but I fort if I ’ad it, ’is dad might marry me… but ’e never, ’e wouldn’t…

Note that Rowling ties the murderess’ psychopathology not only to working a Pregnancy Trap, but at its origin, to another Golden Thread, the physical abuse of a daughter by her father, abuse to include incest. This is something that two characters among Rowling’s ‘Big Four’ trappers have in common with Beattie; Merope Gaunt was mentally tortured and one can assume physically tormented by her father and brother and Krystal Weedon was raped by Odo, her mother’s lover (and little brother’s father?). The speculative thread that Leda Strike, whose pregnancy trap resulted in the birth of her son Cormoran, left Cornwall when and how she did was due to her having been molested by her and Ted’s father, speculation that seems to some a great ‘stretch,’ in light of this repeated backdrop to such traps, may be a commonplace in Rowling stories.

The other murderer in Troubled Blood, after all, Dennis Creed, was conceived via incest; perhaps Beattie telling Strike in her confessional statement that she had been “knocked downstairs” by her dad was meant in the euphemistic sense of “falling down stairs,” the nice way of covering for another person’s violent attack (or for suicide). Strike all but accuses another character in Troubled Blood, Carl Oakden, of having killed his grandmother by pushing her down the stairs in order to inherit her home.

Regardless, the Black Hat in Troubled Blood was a woman whose life was forever changed by her deployment of a Pregnancy Trap that failed to win her a husband. That’s two big hits from Strike5 in our review of the Strike-Ellacott novels for “coercive love.”

Ink Black Heart

• Jago Ross’ Coercive Love for Charlotte Campbell

I’ve already discussed in the first Strike series post the possibility that Charlotte Campbell tried to work a Pregnancy Trap against Cormoran, not to hook him as a fiancée (they were already engaged), but to win his attention to her and their child away from the Detective Agency on Denmark Street. But was her rapid engagement to Jago Ross after Strike called it quits at the beginning of Cuckoo’s Calling also an example of what Rowling once called “coercive love”?

I doubt the possibility would have occurred to me except that I couldn’t find an in-your-face example of a Pregnancy Trap in the sixth Strike-Ellacott novel, Ink Black Heart. As I have confessed before, Ink is the book in this series that I know least well, coming out as it did on the day of my viva exams; I was busily engaged in doing the necessary thesis corrections my external and internal readers wanted when I would normally by doing four or five re-readings of Rowling’s latest.  Given the ubiquity of Pregnancy Traps in Rowling’s work and my own lack of familiarity with this text, I strongly suspect I’m missing something here (and look forward to Serious Strikers throwing light into my Ink Black blind-spot).

The best I have come up with on my rapid-review of this difficult book, though, in search of something akin to a Pregnancy Trap is Ross’ relationship with his second wife, Charlotte Campbell.

You’ll recall that Strike is forced in Heart to use his contract detectives to spy on Ross to get scandalous information about the aristocrat banker that will prevent Jago from dragging Cormoran into his divorce proceedings. The detectives on contract at the Agency discover (and capture on film and taped testimony) that, indeed, Ross abuses his daughters in outrageous fashion. Strike confronts Ross and his second wife with this information, which works not only to protect his Agency from exposure in a tabloid-covered divorce but to protect Ross’ children that he had with his first wife and the twins he sired with Charlotte.

I used the word “sired” there deliberately. It’s a word used in breeding animals today but it has feudal tones in it, both of which senses are in play in Jago’s volatile relationship with Charlotte. As the Viscount of Croy, he needs a male heir, something that a la Henry VIII, his first wife failed to, ahem, deliver. Charlotte tells Strike that even after giving birth to twins, one of which babies is a boy, Jago wants more children through her and she wants nothing to do with that exercise. In the confrontation with Ross and Campbell, the neurotic couple both note Jago’s consumption with siring an heir:

‘You see how he treats me?’ Charlotte said to Strike, searching his face for some sign of pity.

Running Grave

• Mazu Wace’s Pregnancy Trap for Alex Graves (and Jonathan Wace?)

The UHC flagship commune at Chapman Farm has as an important component of its its business model an in-house human breeding operation that creates children to sell on the black market. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that two of the Church’s five ‘Prophets,’ Daiyu Wace the ‘Drowned Prophet’ and Alex Graves the ‘Stolen Prophet’ Conception of Daiyu to win the UHC leader from his first wife had a history that suggested a child’s conception was possibly part of the mother’s calculation to win a fortune or a powerful husband.

Rowling introduced Mazu Wace to readers in a Prologue legal document which presented her as an abused child at Aylmerton Community, who, now as an adult, was being defamed as an agent of that group who lived on as a power-holder in the UHC:

In fact, only one member of the UHC was ever part of the Aylmerton Community: Mrs Mazu Wace, the wife of the UHC’s founder and leader, Jonathan Wace.

Mazu Wace was fifteen years old when the Aylmerton Community was disbanded and she gave evidence against the Crowther brothers at their trial. This is a matter of public record and easily discoverable through court documents and press reports of the case.

Mrs Wace has talked openly of her traumatic experiences at the Aylmerton Community, including at church groups you personally attended. Far from being ‘lucky enough to escape prosecution’, Mrs Wace was herself a victim of the Crowthers. The imputation that she was complicit in, or otherwise approved of, the Crowthers’ vile, unlawful behaviour is highly defamatory and has caused Mrs Wace significant hurt and distress. It has also caused, and is likely to continue to cause, serious reputational harm to Mrs Wace, and to the UHC. This exposes you to significant liability. (Prologue)

This is Rowling’s opening bit of misdirection. She has Strike learn from Lucy that, during their stay as children in the Aylmerton Community, she had been sexually molested by the resident doctor there — and a teen-aged Mazu had been the person to deliver her to him. Lucy begs her half-brother to take her down somehow for all that she had suffered as a victim of pedophilia. Mazu is one messed up woman, as readers soon learn.

Does her participation in Lucy’s molestation, though, mean that she herself was not a victim of the Crowther brothers and their staff? Hold that thought.

In Strike’s interview with the surviving family of Alex Graves (Part Three, Chapter 38), Rowling releases the real Mazu backstory. She was the daughter of one of the Crowther brothers and a woman who left Aylmerton for London, where she became a prostitute and died of a drug overdose. After the break-up of that community, at which time she testified against her probable father (see above), she met Alex Graves when he came to Chapman Farm to do community service work in lieu of jail time for attacking a man with a beer glass in a pub fight. Colonel Graves allows “that’s where [Mazu] got her claws into” his son, fragile in his recovery from his mental illness and substance addiction.

Alex had been on the dole despite his family’s fortune from the Colonel’s grandfather’s beer company, long since sold off. He was able, though, after turning eighteen to “apply for funds” from the “family trust,” which he did promptly after leaving home to live at Chapman Farm with Mazu. When he met with resistance from the Trustees, he announced that Mazu was pregnant with his child. They “got a fair bit out of the trust, one way or another,” in borderline fraudulent petitions for money after the arrival at the Farm of  of Jonathan Wace.

‘Every time we visited the farm, Allie was worse,’ said Mrs Graves, ‘and we could tell there was something between Mazu and Jonathan.’

‘Only time she ever cracked a smile was when Wace was around,’ said Colonel Graves.

Wace’s first wife Jennifer had died by this point. Jonathan had succeeded in convincing Alex that he needed to chant endlessly and perform acts of self-flagellation; he was off all medication and out of his mind when his family kidnapped him and staged an intervention that ended in his suicide. Daiyu inherited £250,000, Mazu married Wace, and “started claiming Wace was Daiyu’s real father” to counter the Graves’ family legal petition to win guardiancy of their granddaughter. If the Waces lost Daiyu, they “lost control of those shares” she inherited. The Graves family insisted on a DNA test of the claim Daiyu “hadn’t been Allie’s child at all.” Which is when Daiyu is reported drowned and her body lost to the sea, thereby preventing the DNA test and recovery of the “quarter of a million pounds,” more than £680,000 today.

I think it reasonable to assume that Daiyu Wace was conceived in a Pregnancy Trap to win access to the Graves family trust, either by Mazu Wace alone or in collaboration with the recently widowed Jonathan Wace. The foundation crime of Running Grave is the murder of Daiyu Wace. Though we learn in the end that it was the handiwork of Wace’s daughter Abigail from his first marriage, it seems important to note per a cui bono perspective that the UHC and Chapman Farm would not have had the funds to grow into the international cult it became except for the providential timing of Daiyu’s death which allowed her mother and step-father to keep her biological father’s inheritance.

I’d say it was as likely as not that Jonathan Wace figured out what had happened and stealthily removed Abigail from Chapman Farm to prevent Mama Mazu from learning what had happened (or because she learned what had been done by her step daughter). Regardless, the Daiyu Pregnancy Trap and the child’s subsequent death morphs simultaneously into her apotheosis as the Drowned Prophet, the veneration of whom at her annual resurrection and appearance is the principal liturgical event of the UHC worship calendar, and the home-industry of the flagship property in sex-without-love for hire (cf. Giles Harmon and Noli Seymour, not to mention the Doherty family nightmare vis a vis Jonathan’s rape of Deidre) and for the production-reproduction of children for sale in the black market to wanna be parents. Mazu’s madness and identity as the victim-mother of all children is a poetic depiction of her agony about her first daughter’s conception, life, death, and retconning as a goddess.

Which is grand speculation that invites a closer look at the lapine facial features of the Graves family, to include Daiyu. Just to the point of this series of posts, though, once again the core crime of a Strike mystery has a Pregnancy Trap at its foundation.

• Belinda (Bijou) Watkins’ Pregnancy Trap for Andrew Honbold QC (or Strike?)

The Mazu Wace trap for Alex Graves and its acting as the financial and worldview foundation of the UHC is well beneath the surface of the Running Graves plot line. Rowling presents an in-your-face Pregnancy Trap in Strike7, though, that takes shape from the first chapter of the first Part of the novel with the appearance of barrister Bijou, a lawyer whose principal distinctions among others at the Old Bailey are her bust and bum and her brazen willingness to show and share them to her advantage. She succeeds in drawing Strike into her bedroom for gratuitous sex more than once, and, having become pregnant, in gaining his assistance in helping the Queen’s Counsel she says is the father of her love child.

Ilsa Herbert gives Robin the Bijou Watkins bio-in-brief during a break after the baptism that opens the action in Running Grave:

‘Why do they [call her Bijou instead of Belinda]?’

‘Because she tells them to,’ said Ilsa crossly, and Robin laughed. ‘She’s having an affair with a married QC, and I hope to God I don’t meet him in court any time soon, because she’s told us way too much about what they get up to in bed. She’s quite open about trying to get pregnant by him, to get him to leave his wife… but maybe I’m bitter… well, I am bitter. I don’t need women who’re size eight around me, right now. This is a size sixteen,’ she said, looking down at her navy dress. ‘I’ve never been this big in my life.’ Part One, Chapter 2

Bijou really is determined to succeed in her trapping the QC, as Ilsa tells Robin in Chapter 16: ‘You realise she told me – with five other people within earshot, incidentally – that she took a used condom out of the bin, while she was having an affair with that married QC, and inserted it inside herself?’ What I find mahvelous about Bijou is not that she does these things but that she is unable to keep the story to herself…

Soon the tabloids get wind of the story, because how wouldn’t they? This appeared in the Private Eye:

• Ryan Murphy’s Pregnancy Trap of Robin Ellacott?

Murphy is determined to engage the still available Ms Ellacott and Serious Strikers have been speculating since Cormoran felt the need to tell Robin that he was in love with her (if not in so many words) at the close of Running Grave that he is already piercing his prophylactics to make his marriage proposal a compelling offer.

There is, of course, no evidence of this beyond his perfectly understandable ardor for the woman in question.

I hope by this point in my series of posts about the Golden Thread of Pregnancy Traps that runs through all of Rowling’s work that speculation about Murphy trying to trap Ellacott via an unwanted pregnancy should be a default idea to serious readers of her work. Pregnancy Traps are to Rowling-Galbraith what children without parents are to Dickens; the word is ‘ubiquitous.’

But are they really in everything Rowling has written? Before I close off my review, I’m obliged to look at the Fantastic Beast screenplays, The Ickabog, and, my favorite, The Christmas Pig to see if any of these stories include pregnancy traps or some other kind of “coercive love.” Stay tuned for that!