The piano stood in the alcove to the right of the fireplace. It was made of a light walnut wood, with darker-coloured fretting over the faded blue silk above the keyboard. Mamma had got it...

We went to live in Cheviot Street after the war, when Dadda came back from the camp in which he had been a prisoner. While he was away we lived in rooms in an even...

She held, in any case, a view that was the opposite of that apparently held by most Christians – she regarded religion as an activity more suitable for the men than the womenfolk of a...

Eventually, anyway, Isaak accepted the invitation. He arrived, as I have said, a day late. He did not expect Dadda would be at home, and he wasn’t. But Isaak had expected he would be at...

Dadda let himself in in his usual quiet way and was in the room before anyone was aware of him. I used to play a game of trying to detect the instant of his opening...

I know before I start that I cannot hope to make a good job of Singing Jinny. Perhaps it would be best simply to say that she was a woman of outstanding vitality, and leave...

Solly never missed a week, except on the rare occasions when he was ill. He was always the first to arrive; sometimes so early that he would have tea with us. Anna, who did not...

Mamma thought at first that it was shyness, or a feeling of inferiority, on Solly’s part that was responsible for the failure of matters to get ahead. One afternoon, when he called in to return...

Solly sat in the rocking-chair, watching the fire, listening to its gusty, intermittent breathing and to the more distant noises of the children outside. She handed him the cup, still without saying anything. He took...

Dadda said: ‘Isaak, this is Solly. I have told you of him. Solly, my brother, Isaak. He is a Hun, Solly.’ He laughed. ‘An enemy of mankind.’ ‘Hoch der Kaiser,’ Isaak said. He was smiling...