Lamorna

LAMORNA

Lamorna is the name of Barbara Berrill´s house, but, for Stephen, "Lamorna" means a lot of different things:

• the sweetness of Barbara and Keith's mother, (and therefore, his discovery of sexual attraction), 
• the match with which he and Barbara lit their first cigarrete (a rite of passage to adulthood)
•  the terror of the Lanes (and how he overcame it)  
• the silence under the elders (=the loneliness of Uncle Peter, and his terrible reality) 

Furthermore, the name seems to represent a concrete period and place in the narrator´s life. Stephen refers to the "Lamorna Time" and to " a distant land across the sea" The time  seems to be his transition between childhood and adulthood, and the place where that happened is the Close, in the suburbs of London.

The name is also linked to the smell of the privet in the lookout:"... And, woven somehow into the sweetness of the smell(...) L...A...M...O...R...N...A" We knew the smell was important for Stephen, as it aroused a lot of different feelings and in fact  is the catalyst of the whole story. Now we learn that the perfume of the privet and the name Lamorna are closely related, and they connote the same ideas for him. 

In conclusion, Lamorna is the  mixture of sensations, experiences, feelings  and discoveries that turned Stephen into an adult. It describes the time in which, while playing a spying game, he learnt about love, relationships and growing up, and in which he gradually abandonned the innocence of childhood.