PB Takes a Holiday Book

I hadn't quite thought of it this way. Yes, we're connected; we abut; we do dialogue; we do the essentials in conjunction: procreation, tennis volleys, sarcasm. Yet, in real life, we are not actors in a stage play; this is not a set piece. Each of us has, first, our own existence, our own understanding, our own world. Yours is not mine; nor mine, yours. But by necessity, we occasionally enter each other's world. And there is not always a suitable translation.

Julia Ferndale is widowed, a Catholic, with two grown daughters and living with her mother in slightly reduced circumstances. She types legal documents for the law offices of Warboys, Smith and Toogood, Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths.

Doris Smith lives with her daughter, a love child, and hides her half-bottles of vodka in a bread box. She sells shoes, but not after her petty thievery is discovered.

Francis Tyte looks like Leslie Howard and has done commercials, small parts in television. He ingratiates, charms. He leaves when he has what he wants.

It is Francis who fathered Doris' child. It is Francis who will marry, then desert Julia.

Connections suddenly were everywhere, an ugly sense crept out of hiding.

This is classic Trevor, with an attention to detail (sponge-bag trousers and a jacket gone over with thawpit), wry colloquialism (He'd got even thinner, his face especially, not that it didn't suit him. Lean bacon's best, as Irene in handbags always said.), and a seeping creepiness.

Police are called; Miss Purchase runs a nursing home; Julia's mother hobbles to her bench under the tulip tree. They, too, have their own worlds, and see it all through a separate lens.