‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ by Edith Holden

 Edith Holden was a big influence on me in the 1970s - 80s. I loved reading the facsimile reproduction of her nature notes from 1906, printed in 1977, and subsequently bought further hardback volumes: ‘The Nature Notes 1905’ (a newly-discover predecessor),’The Edwardian Lady: the story of Edith Holden’ and ‘The Country Diary Companion’ to tie in with a television series in 1984. My love of nature, illustration, prose and poetry all fused together, and I found reading her nature notes both absorbing and relaxing. Similarly I used to look forward to watching the television series, beautifully filmed and acted, after a long day teaching full-time. It took me to another world and encouraged me to take up botanical illustration art classes. I loved drawing flowers but found water colour too difficult a medium, so I invested in a set of colouring pencils in a large wooden case, not unlike those I had as a child. My enthusiasm grew as I took delight in drawing and colouring fungi, inspired by another favourite illustrator: Beatrix Potter. I still watch the DVD of the television series, and although my colouring pencils are worn-down by former pupils and grandchildren these days, I loved the names of the colours as I did as a child: Chartreuse, Madder Carmine, Pale Ultramarine and Indigo.

A Year in the Meadow by Benjamin Perkins.

 Benjamin Perkins has known Lapwing Meadows in rural Suffolk for many years and takes the reader through the changing seasons there showing him local flora and fauna that he illustrates beautifully and plentifully in watercolour. It is an authentic account of living in the country, come rain or shine, and allows the reader to imagine a slower pace of life off the beaten track. I have always admired Benjamin Perkins’s paintings at exhibitions, so this book allows me to visit the unspoilt meadowland and landscape that has inspired him for so many years.

A Country Naturalist’s Year by Colvin McElvie

 Based in Dumfriesshire, but not exclusively, we visit the countryside through the seasons in the company of a very knowledgable guide. The book is lavishly illustrated by Rodger McPhail. This is a book to take to Scotland to sit by a log fire and read after a long day on the moors, along the woodland edge or by the river bank. And next day to enjoy looking further afield for all that has been missed: an osprey nest on a Highland river or the wild haunts of peregrine falcons and merlins, perhaps. All becomes possible when these pages are turned and savoured as we long to learn more.

Shorelands Summer Diary by C.F. Tunnicliffe

 I have always loved Tunnicliffe’s illustrations when I borrowed hardback books of essays by Alison Uttley from my local library. This diary, first published in 1952, explores his love of drawing and painting estuary birds between April to September from his home in Anglesey. The text is close to an autobiography and the many illustrations are sublime. Shorelands is the name of the bungalow whereTunnicliffe lived from 1947 until his death in 1979. This is a perfect book to take to a holiday cottage in a similarly remote place and pass time with binoculars, on walks or through the kitchen window,  identifying different species of estuary birds to be found there. Or during this time of Covid, to imagine such a place, living there and immersing oneself in its sense of place, hoping that one may return one day.

The Shell Nature Book

 Published in 1964, with beautiful illustrations by Edith and Rowland Hilder and other fine artists, this book takes me back to my childhood. It is not unlike the Ladybird nature series I enjoyed then, with text by Geoffrey Grigson. I know the illustrations well as some of them, printed in poster form,  I used as a primary teacher to accompany my classroom nature table throughout the changing seasons. There is something very comforting about these scenes, although one would have to be very lucky to see so many species of birds on a bird table or seashore. But that is why I love it, as I did those Ladybird illustrations; it lifts me into a perfect world, a rural idyll and I am quite content to bask in its loveliness. 

Gracelaced by Ruth Chou Simons

Discovering timeless truths through seasons of the heart

This is a beautiful book I dip into often to draw close to God - the seasonal illustrations are truly sublime but the text is equally inspiring, linked to familiar quotations from the Bible scripted in calligraphy to accompany the beautiful original artwork. 

‘And Jesus comes to us today - as He did 2000 years ago - offering an unburdened soul to us who lay our baggage at His feet and take up the yoke of rest He provides.’

‘The invitation and welcome is yours: to come as broken, hopeless and burdened...and to find peace for your soul.’

I was drawn to this book by chance - I have always loved nature diaries like ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ by Edith Holden, and on of my favourite nature books is The Shell Nature Book - I used to use its reproduced posters to illustrate my classroom nature table when I started teaching over 40 years ago.

Similarly I love books of calligraphy - Bible quotations or poetry such a ‘Springs of Joy’ by Evelyn Scaramanga, ‘The Golden Thread’ and ‘Images of Christmas’ by Dorothy Boux.

But ‘Gracelaced’ takes me further - it urges me to takes in its spiritual teachings more deeply and for that I am very grateful. As George Harrison said, ‘Everything else can wait except for the search for God.’

A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr

My interest in medieval wall paintings grew through regular visits to St. Faith’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey where the east wall is covered by a 13th century portrait of  the Saint, accompanied by the monk who is said to have painted her. However, it was reading a short novel by J.L. Carr that inspired me to seek them out in country churches. A Month in the Country was published in 1980 , won the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. It was subsequently made into a film starring Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth. It tells the story of Tom Birkin, a survivor from the Great War, commissioned to undertake the uncovering and restoration of a medieval Doom mural in a country church in Yorkshire during the ‘long warm days of August’. It is a simple poignant story of friendship, unrequited love, village life and painstaking restoration.  All too soon, Birkin’s country idyll is over and he is on his way.  J.L.Carr knows his subject well; passion and tension are both revealed behind the works of both artist and restorer, centuries apart. The church is set in fictitious Oxgodby, but in reality the author sets its background in the ‘fields of Northamptonshire’ as he explains in the foreword. Could he have been thinking of Croughton, perhaps, whose 14th century murals were discovered in 1921 and restored in the 1960s?  

A Doom worthy of such inspiration is that at Oddington, Gloucestershire. The village was moved to higher, drier ground after the Black Death, and a new church was built in 1852. By 1860, the church, dedicated to St. Nicholas and enlarged by the Normans, was derelict. Wall paintings, dated 1340, were not discovered until whitewash was removed in 1913 during restoration. An articleinThe Times, written in 1935, calls it ‘one of the most notable representations of the Last Judgement now surviving in the country’. It includes gruesome scenes from hell: grotesque monsters and boiling cauldrons in contrast to redeemed souls clambering to heaven, assisted by angels on the other side often mural. Restoring these works of art, sometimes hidden for centuries, obscured by dust and lime wash must be tremendously exciting. As Birkin explains in A Month in the Country, ‘perhaps you can understand if I explain that, to begin with, I wasn’t sure of what I was uncovering:’

‘It was breathtaking. A tremendous waterfall of colour, the blues of the apex falling, then seethingintoaturbulenceof red; like all truly great works of art, hammering you with its whole before beguiling you with its parts.’

Medieval wall paintings and other superstitious pictures were banned by Edward VI in 1547 and byElizabeth 1 in 1559. Others that escaped, in remote parts of the country, were obliterated less than a century later.

Many have been uncovered and restored in the last hundred years, some as late as the 1970s. In Leebotwood, Shropshire, a medieval painting of Christ and Mary with angels in attendance was uncovered in 1976. The Last Judgement at Blyth, Northamptonshire, probably the work of a travelling artist, restored in 1987, is recognised as one of the most complete medieval murals in the country. 

Some murals have survived intact; others are mere fragments of what might have been such as those at Shorthampton, Oxfordshire. Depictions of St. Christopher and St. Martin at Chalgrave, Bedfordshire are much faded. However, a huge mural of St. Christopher carrying the Christ-child at the 12th century church of St. Mary Magdalen, Baunton, Gloucestershire seems as fresh as the day it was painted, decorated with fish, a mermaid and a ship. It continues to offer protection to those entering and leaving the church, opposite the south door. 

Who knows how many frescoes will be discovered in country churches off the beaten track? only time will tell.

  I love this novella and read it again recently with a book group. I first came across it nearly twenty years ago and it set me off on a trail to discover medieval wall paintings across the country, and later in northern Italy.

Recently I  suffered a shocking and heart-breaking bereavement of a close relative. As I start to read again,  this novel is perfect: it is a sad, wistful story set in a time of hardship and uncertainty; I find its gentle  bleakness strangely comforting.

We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. 

Murder on Mustique by Anne Glenconner

 I read Anne Glenconner’s best-selling autobiography ‘Lady in Waiting’ on holiday on Nevis a year ago. Although I do not really gravitate towards reading murder mysteries, I enjoyed ‘Murder on Mustique’ as it took me back to the Caribbean during this time of Lockdown when we are not allowed to travel anywhere. We first visited the Caribbean in 1981 and holidayed in Barbados. Since then we have visited Cuba, Saint Lucia, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Saint Barts, Antigua, Saint Kitts and the Bahamas. Nevis was our favourite with its historical associations connected to Lord Nelson - his wife Fanny was born there and we stayed on her family’s former plantation. Recently we enjoyed a holiday in Bermuda - in the Atlantic, rather than the Caribbean, but equally beautiful with pristine turquoise waters lapping on to pink sand. We hope to return to Barbados one day, and I look forward to staying at The Cotton House on Mustique too, if that were possible. But for now I can only visit in my imagination, and this novel effortlessly takes me to the island where ‘it’s still so thick with trees and undergrowth it looks like an emerald, resting on a skein of blue velvet.’

Set in 2002, the author’s familiarity with the island (owned by her husband years ago) let’s her invite the reader into exclusive private villas dotted around the island, Basil’s beach bar and the Bamboo church. The story is partly autobiographical - Anne Glenconner becomes Lady Vee Blake, her husband Colin Tennant, Jasper. But when a young woman is murdered fiction takes over...

I look forward to reading more of the adventures of Lady Vee and Detective Solomon Nile on the trail of ‘who done it?’But I look forward even more to visiting the island, less menacing, I hope,  in reality than in fiction.

The sun is sinking behind the horizon and I almost think I catch a flash of emerald green on the sea’s surface - but no. Mustique looks absolutely beautiful, a home from home, and my heart is full of gratitude as I hurry down the steps to greet my friends.

That’s a relief.

The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy Boston

First published in 1954, this is one of my favourite children’s stories. I have visited the beautiful old house in Hemingford Grey several times with its exquisite garden leading down to the river. The story was adapted for television a long while ago, and visiting the house brings the story back to life: the old chest containing Toby’s coat and sword, Alexander’s flute, the rocking horse, Linnet’s birdcage and a little Japanese wooden mouse are all items left behind by the children died in the Plague, who return to befriend Tolly, staying with his grandmother for Christmas while his parents are abroad. 

Over the fireplace hung a large oil painting of a family, three children and two ladies. There were two handsome boys, wearing lace collars and dark green silk suits... and a little girl holdings a chaffinch, and beside her on the ground was an open wicker cage.

They all had large dark eyes and all their eyes seemed fixed on Tolly. If he moved to the side all the eyes moved after him.

As they rested there, tired and dreamy and content, a woman’s voice began to sing very softly a cradle song...

‘It’s the grandmother rocking the cradle, ‘ said Mrs. Oldknow, and her eyes were full of tears....while four hundred years ago, a baby went to sleep.

The house is beautifully eccentric:

There were vases everywhere filled with queer flowers - branches of dry winter twigs out of which little tassels and rosettes of flower petals were bursting, some yellow, some white, some purple.

The room seemed to be the ground floor of a castle... its thick stone walls were strong, warm and lively. It was furnished with comfortable polished old-fashioned things as though living in castles was quite ordinary.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

First published in 1949, I love this fictional memoir of a teenage girl living in eccentric poverty in a remote Suffolk gatehouse before the War.  It is such a cosy and humorous read from the start as the heroine, Cassandra, sets the scene: 

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.

I love all the characters but my favourite is Stephen Colly: He has lived with us ever since he was a little boy - his mother used to be our maid, in the days when we could still afford one, and when she died he had nowhere to go. He grows vegetables for us and looks after the hens - and does a thousand odd jobs - I can’t think how we should get on without him. He has always been rather devoted to me; father calls him my swain.

When Miss Marcy, the librarian, calls round to chair an ‘Enquiry into the Finances of the Mortmain Family’ everyone’s income is written down as ‘nil’ apart from Stephen who will contribute his  25 shillings a week’s wages from working at Four Stones Farm, leaving him time to still work for the Mortmains in the evening.

Stephen is such a kind, honourable soul, and his ‘fair and noble’ good looks enable him to go to London  to model for photos,  and later to star in silent films. He saves up his earnings to buy Cassandra a small potable wireless for her birthday, only to be upstaged by her wealthy American friend Simon staying nearby who sends a a wireless and a gramophone combined with a blue record case to match. Nobody ever had such a glorious present. 

‘Yours has a real wooden case,’ I told him, ‘with such a beautiful high polish’.Oh, I was sorry for him! After all the months he had been saving up! I ran after him and, from the top of the kitchen stairs, I could see him staring at his little brown wireless. He turned it off, then went out into the garden with a most bitter expression on his face.

‘Oh, Stephen!’ I cried, ‘ It was a much bigger present from you. Simon didn’t have to save - or work for it.’ 

‘No, that was my privilege,’ he said quietly.

I love the description of Stephen’s room ‘in the  bit of the kitchen  where the hen-roosts were; father turned it into two two little rooms which Stephen and his mother had - hers is just a store-room now’.

...the narrow window was almost overgrown with ivy and the whitewash on the wall was discoloured and peeling off in flakes. On the chest of drawers his comb was placed exactly midway between a photograph of his mother with him as a baby in her arms, and a snapshot of me - both in aluminium frames much too large for them.

But it is Simon who has won Cassandra’s heart by the end of the novel. 

...

.

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

It is fifty years since I read this short novel and I have enjoyed re-reading it. It is such a strange, disturbing tale, set in a remote valley in Wales, and of its time. Alison and Roger are teenagers staying in a Georgian house and discover an old dinner service in the attic, decorated with an owl design, or is it flowers? Their friendship with a local boy Gwynn becomes tense as they find themselves caught up with an ancient legend: how a beautiful wife Blodeuwedd was created out of flowers for Lleu but was turned into an owl after she became unfaithful to him.
Soon after discovering the plates a strange panel is revealed, and the power of the legend  is unleashed...
“She was tall. Her long hair fell to her waist, framing in gold her pale and lovely face. Her eyes were blue. She wore a loose gown of white cambric, embroidered with living green stems of broom and meadowsweet, and a wreath of green oak leaves in her hair.”
All these years later I find myself wondering what happened to Alison, Roger and Gwynn in the aftermath of that hot summer c.1967.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

A fictional account of lives caught up in the Siege of Sarajevo, the longest city siege in the history of modern warfare that lasted nearly four years from 1992 -1996.
Loosely based on the story of a renowned Sarajevo cellist who played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor for 22 days to honour 22 people killed in a mortar attack queuing to buy bread in the besieged city in 1992.
'The Cellist of Sarajevo'  is a powerful book concentrating on a few characters whose stories are interwoven in the tragedy of war as snipers in the hills overlook the shattered streets below. The writing is spare and gripping: a testament to the sorrow and pity of war across the world, past, present and future.

'The apartment she's in was once a nice home.On the walls opposite the windows, daggers of glass stick out of the plaster like darts stuck in a corkboard, and a slush of human occupation, papers, photographs, a shredded sofa lies discarded. Someone will come along eventually to pick it all up, if only to burn as fuel. She tries not to wonder too much about the people who used to live here, what they were like, if they were happy, if they are still alive, if they died here.'

'Every day, at four o'clock.' She turns towards him as she says this, as if there's something he does not understand.' Every day he sits there and plays. People go and listen. Some leave flowers. I've been several times. Sometimes I listen all the way through, and sometimes I leave after a few minutes.'

'In a few seconds the door will open. At least four men , maybe more , will burst through and, as quickly as they can, they will fire as many bullets into her as possible.
She hears one of them take a step back, knows he's about to kick in the door. She closes her eyes, recalls the notes she heard only yesterday, a melody that is now longer there but feels very close...'

Simple Pleasures, edited by Ivo Dawnay

I bought this little hardback at Kew Gardens one autumn  and it is delightful to dip into: 55 little essays by different writers about 'little things that make life worth living'. ' The deepest pleasures almost always come from the simples sources' and yet, ' there is nothing simple about simple pleasures'. My favourite essays include 'A Good Log Fire', 'Owls at Night' 'Gone Fishing', 'Welsh Rain' and 'In Pursuit of the Purple Emperor'.
'For one heady month in midsummer the Emperor takes to the air, and people vulnerable to obsessive behaviour go quite silly.'
'Suddenly - and I had warned you about visions and waking dreams- there it was , the subject of my wildest aspirations, a pristine Iole male imbibing some mysterious ambrosia on the woodland floor. The experience  realised one of those dreams that mean all and everything to the dreamer without meaning anything to anyone else. Such desiderata are of the utmost importance, being the passion of the individual soul.' Matthew Oates
Reading this book made me want to write about my favourite 'simple pleasures' too. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to do the same.

The Promise of Winter by Martin Marty and Michah Marty

A cold day coming in the middle of a mild winter. Snowdrops and winter aconites are in bud and my favourite shrub, Hamamelis,  is flowering with delicate yellow tassels.Winter flowers bring their own joy: cream hellebores, Daphne and Winter Jasmine, reminding me of the garden in Lucy Boston's 'Children of Green Knowe' and Patrick Synge's 'Flowers in Winter' which surveys the possibilities of having colour in the garden even in the coldest months.
 Today is Shrove Tuesday and  our prescribed Lent reading is a course based on the Psalms.
 'The Promise of Winter' is a book I have enjoyed for many years with meditations based on psalms, accompanied by beautiful black and white photographs of snow drifts and snowscapes.
'Rather than looking ahead to spring, 'The Promise of Winter' explores the signs of promise and presence found in the winter of the soul. It is this presence and promise that provide  spiritual strength to help people live during ordinary days and fallow seasons.'
I find it comforting to observe these bleak landscapes; there is a simplicity in winter following Christmas festivities we need to embrace: a time of quiet and reflection befor spring comes and days lengthen once more.'Farmers know that in the rhythm of the year and the nature of the soil, there is a reason for fields to lie fallow for a season - winter.' Enjoy it while it lasts.

Egyptian Palaces and Villas by Shirley Johnston

Home from a wonderful trip to Egypt and enjoying leafing through this lavishly illustrated book of colour photographs: the ultimate bedside book to relive the romance of Travel. Egypt is a beautiful, fascinating country and I long to return. I loved revisiting Mena House, where we stayed close to the Pyramids, the Cataract Hotel, Aswan and the Winter Palace, Luxor, imaging walking through the rooms again as Agatha Christie once did when she wrote 'Death on the Nile' in 1937.
' " That's Hercule Poiret, the detective," said Mrs. Allerton. She and her son were sitting in brightly painted scarlet basket chairs outside the Cataract Hotel, Assuan.'
'Poirot passed out on the other side on to the terrace overlooking the Nile. Here were little tables set for tea, but it was early still. He stood for a few moments looking down on to the river then strolled down through the gardens.'
'Dinner was over. The terrace outside the Cataract Hotel was softly lit. Most of the guests staying at the Hotel were there sitting at little tables.'
I first came across this book of palaces and villas on SSMisr, a lovely old steamer on which we travelled up the Nile visiting temples and tombs on the way. Birds flew in and out of the deserted temples, and I was reminded of the little swallow in Oscar Wilde's story, 'The Happy Prince' who was 'waited for in Egypt. My friends are flying up and down the Nile and talking to the large lotus flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.'
 And now I am fascinated by all the other palaces I may never see, beautifully photographed with exquisite attention to detail.I long to visit Alexandria, and should I return to Cairo, I vow to stay at the Gezira Palace,, transformed for the Empress Eugenie's stay in 1869. Travel is a wonderful experience to be savoured long after returning home, thanks to such a sumptuous book: a veritable feast of delights.

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

I first read this short novel (184 pages) in 1985 and recently re-read it as we were staying at the Grand Hotel du Lac in Vevey where it was written. It is a charming spot, much more attractive than Montreux and the hotel smaller, prettier and friendlier than all the other Belle Époque hotels in Switzerland. I loved its feminine decor, fresh flowers everywhere and the pastel portrait of the actress Anna Massey in the lobby. She had played the heroine Edith in a television adaptation of the story soon after it won the Booker Prize. Everything came to life: the steamers on the lake, the little town close by, the Italian shop in Montreux where Mrs. Pusey bought her exquisite lingerie...I loved re-reading it all. I had forgotten the sharp sting of betrayal at the end of the novel and it took me by surprise again as it did all those years ago.
I treated myself to a couple of illustrated books of the hotel to savour the memories. One is called Dream Makers and matches quotations from the novel to lovely photographs of the place.
'On the opposite shore she could make out lights that seemed almost welcoming now: the lights of the Hotel du Lac.'
I long to go back but the book takes me there in an instant.

The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories

Home from a family holiday in Cornwall and in the mood to re-read Daphne Du Maurier. We rented a cottage in Fowey and revisited all the old haunts: Bodinnick, Polruan, Lansallos, Par and the Menabilly estate by Polridmouth cove.I'd forgotten how much I loved it down there: the spirit of place seeps into your bones as you recall all the stories written there.
The Rebecca Notebook was the author's original outline for her famous novel and The Rebecca Epilogue, previously unpublished, takes the reader beyond the novel itself. The essays are a good read and I found Death and Widowhood particularly poignant and comforting.
'...the spirit of tenderness, of love, will not desert you. You will find that it has become part of you, rising from within yourself; and because of it you are no longer fearful of loneliness, of the dark, because death, the last enemy has been overcome.'
What an interesting woman Daphne Du Maurier was. I find myself wanting to find out more.

Seaside Resorts by Candida Lycett Green

A celebration of British Seaside Resorts by The Oldie's Unwrecked England columnist, beautifully illustrated with colour photographs evoking places one hopes to revisit one day. I was so saddened to hear that the much-loved writer had passed way last month -I loved her style of writings and hope more surfaces in time.
The first glimpse of the sea after an absence always excites me- a feeling triggered no doubt by the memory of childhood holidays; memories which we in turn pass on to our children and grandchildren. For me resorts are places where, when you face out to sea, your cares are behind you: the promenades and sea walls aw the safe divider between the civilised world and the wild.

The Handsomest Young Man in England by Michael Hastings

I bought this illustrated biography of Rupert Brooke in 1970 and am still enjoying leafing through it many years later. A hundred years on from the outbreak of the Great War the reproduced sepia photographs of Rupert Brooke and his friends tell of a lost world, another age. One of my favourite photographs is of Brooke reading to Frances Cornford on a Norfolk beach on August 2nd 1914. Days later he was in training for the Royal Naval Division.
Frances Cornford wrote of 'the young, Apollo, golden haired' 'magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life'. Like so many of that generation, Brooke lost his life less than a year later. It was W. B. Yeats who described him as 'the handsomest young man in England'.
My mother had a hardback copy of Brooke's poems that I read to her while she lay dying in hospital from septicaemia: ironically, the same illness that took Brooke's life.
We often visit Grantchester, take tea in the Orchard and walk by the river, hearing 'the breeze sobbing in the little trees'. Nothing has changed; time stands still as it did then, over a hundred years ago.
Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

I enjoyed reading Helen Dunmore's poetry and early novels and this was a welcome return - 239 pages is a good length - short enough to savour and reread. Isabel Carey, recently married, a young doctor's wife in a close-knit Yorkshire community in 1952, feels isolated and lonely in her new role. Her husband is busy and preoccupied, frequently on-call at night. Having found an airman's greatcoat in a cupboard in their rented rooms, Isabel uses it to keep warm. It is then that she starts to hear a tapping at the window...This ghost story is both plausible and fanciful as Isabel's life merges with that of an airman, 'one of many thousands of young men who were ripped out of life before their time'.
'His fingers tasted of nicotine and they trembled and steadied as they touched her, tentatively at first and then stroking her skin with infinite gentleness, as if he hadn't believed he would ever touch a woman's face again.'
In the author's own words: 'the danger is that she will be trapped between the two worlds, belong to neither one nor the other'. Even at the end of the novel there is a hint that the past may still continue to haunt her as 'down on the grass the greatcoat's heavy cloth rippled as if a night wind were walking under it'.