Mrs. Manson shocked him on the first encounter. She was a thin, bright-eyed woman of medium height, dressed in an old skirt and pullover, and she was smoking a cigarette. He had only once or...

‘How conventional death makes us,’ she said. ‘Not like birth. I remember when the twins were born, Oliver picked each of them up in turn and tossed them so high that the midwife swore Paddy...

‘It’s the way you handle things. You go about them the way John would if he were here – with what I can only describe as a large-handed confidence. Neither of you have particularly large...

‘Where you excel? It didn’t take me long to find out. I’ve never known anybody who learned things so quickly, with so little effort. I guessed it that first afternoon, over tea.’ ‘Yes, I was...

Patrick put down his brush. ‘Two weeks? We’ll have this work finished this afternoon. What are we going to wait for?’ ‘For you to do a little job,’ John told him. ‘How on earth do...

‘Why pick me out to have overwhelming ambitions? What about yourself?’ She smiled. ‘What about John?’ ‘John’s ambitions are on the surface. He isn’t as complex as you are, darling.’ Frank took up the oars...

He heard John’s voice, muffled: ‘Push off, Paddy,’ and Patrick’s more boisterous cry: ‘Heave ho, me hearties!’ There was the scrape of wood, and the voices diminishing. He waited for a couple of minutes, his...

‘I could have a word with Arnold, and get him to agree to have the whole thing quietly dropped. There shouldn’t be any difficulty about that. Or we can let it go through to the...

During that summer, Frank grew into being an integral member of the citizens. He was accepted in different ways by the different children – most enthusiastically by Diana, least by Patricia. Enthusiasm as such did...

‘We’re all here now. We can be off.’ His words emphasized rather than covered the gap; without Patricia’s thin restless figure, her untidy near-auburn hair, they were so obviously not all present. Patrick said nothing,...