Polly was now dancing with her uncle, Boy. She did not look radiant and happy as such a spoilt darling should at her coming-out ball, but tired and pinched about the mouth, nor was she chattering away like the other women. ‘I shouldn’t care for one of my girls to look like that,’ Aunt Sadie […]

Following the meal, the group usually moved to the small Tapestry Room to discuss the latest news: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Virginia Woolf’s suicide, Nancy’s brother-in-law who was missing in action. After thoroughly covering the topics of the day, they’d turn to savagely reviewing books and friends. The nights ended with Eddy and Helen […]

Boud and I both avoided the company of the Grown-Ups at this time as much as we could. At Swinbrook, we lived in the DFD except for meal-times. We divided it down the middle, and Boud decorated her side with Fascist insignia of all kinds – the Italian ‘fasces’, a bundle of sticks bound with […]

We had never learnt to dance, and, for some reason, we had supposed it to be a thing which everybody could do quite easily and naturally. I think Linda realized there and then what it took me years to learn, that the behavior of civilized man really has nothing to do with nature, that all […]