Palladian (25 page)

It was a cold morning, but sunny, and they took a short walk down the lime avenue. When they came to the animals’ graves and the grassy mound, Cassandra said: ‘What
is
this?’

‘It was the old ice house. I had it filled in a long time ago, because it was dangerous to children.’

There had never been any children. Only Sophy.

‘I shall get all these dead laurels cut out,’ he went on. ‘Clear up some of this timber.’

Halfway up the avenue he said: ‘Darling, I thought at breakfast and last night that you managed very sweetly. It isn’t fair of me to ask you to put up with all these people, but I admire you for the gentle way you have with them.’

‘Only Nanny frightens me.’

‘She can’t live for ever.’

As they neared the house they found a taxi throbbing at the foot of the steps.

‘Is it … could it be Margaret at last?’ asked Cassandra, and ran up the steps into the house ahead of Marion.

Mrs Adams rushed through the baize door into the hall with a pile of napkins. ‘The water’s broke, Miss, I mean Madam.’

‘What water?’ Cassandra asked stupidly.

‘Madam’s started her pains.’

Out on the drive the taxi-driver swung his arms back and forth across his chest and stamped his feet. ‘It is not as cold as all that,’ Marion thought, coming up the steps into the house.

Margaret came downstairs in her fur coat, her watch in her hand. It was as if she were something they had all awaited. She came slowly down the stairs. Tinty followed. Her face was pale and she had covered it with a blue net veil.

‘Are you timing yourself?’ Tom enquired, fascinated by the watch. ‘Good-bye, Margaret, I am sure you will manage very well.’

Margaret came to Cassandra and kissed her. To Marion she said: ‘Thank you, Marion, for putting up with me all this long time.’

He could hardly say it had been a pleasure and murmured in his throat instead.

‘I want to go before Nanny has time to say I shall be worse before I am better,’ said Margaret, and went down the steps, refusing her cousin’s arm. Tinty followed.

Nanny was with Mrs Adams at a window upstairs. Both were full of the forebodings of birth, of reminiscence and gloomy prophecy. They saw the cab heave over as Margaret stepped into it, watched the case put in beside the driver and Tinty laying back her veil and waving, as the cab went down the drive towards the lodge gates.

‘Margaret relented towards you at the end, almost as if she felt she was going to die,’ Tom observed to Marion as they stood waving at the top of the steps. Then, as it was opening time, he said good-bye himself and followed the cab down the drive on foot.

When Marion and Cassandra went indoors, only a lopsided hen was left to enliven the façade, for Nanny and Mrs Adams had withdrawn their heads. The hen pecked between the cracks of the terrace paving stones and wandered into the hall. But as the dark shadows of indoors fell coldly across it like a knife, it turned and tottered back into the sunshine.

Elizabeth Taylor

Introduced by Hilary Mantel

‘Quietly and devastatingly amusing’
Hilary Mantel

Fifteen-year-old Angel knows she is different, that she is destined
to become a feted author and the owner of great riches. Surely her
first novel confirms this – it is a masterpiece, she thinks.

After reading the novel, the publishers are certain
The Lady lrania
will be a success, in spite of – and perhaps because of – its overblown
style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book:
‘Some old lady, romanticising behind lace-curtains’ … ‘Angelica
Deverell is too good a name to be true. … she might be an old man.
It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary
Anne Evans and in walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.’
So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman
who sits before them, with not a seed of irony
or a grain of humour in her soul.

‘A masterpiece … Angel is a brilliant creation’
Lesley Glaister,
Guardian

‘How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time!’
Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Taylor

Introduced by Paul Bailey

On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey
arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining
days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly
curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip.
Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their
twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.

Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship
with Ludo, a handsome young writer, and learns that
even the old can fall in love …

‘One of my all-time favourite authors’
Sarah Waters

‘Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Bowen –
soul sisters all’
Anne Tyler

‘Elizabeth Taylor had the keenest eye and ear for the pain lurking
behind a genteel demeanour’
Paul Bailey,
Guardian