by Patrick Gale
‘What the fuck were you two doing, behaving like that at my deathbed?’ Hilary asked from behind his bandages.
‘Thank God. He’s going to be all right. He’s trying to say something,’ said his sister, relief chasing urgency across her face. Behind them the little Asian girl slipped out unnoticed.
‘I suppose that this is the moment for me to treat you to my acclaimed rendition of “Hello, Young Lovers”,’ continued Hilary.
‘Yes, he’s really trying,’ said Rufus. ‘Shall I fetch a doctor?’
Chapter twenty-eight
Holding her torch in one hand and the can of lighter fuel in the other, Sumitra anointed first the photograph from Starbright Agency, then liberally doused the rest of the shrine. From a paper bag she produced the fragments of the record destroyed in holy wrath that afternoon, and heaped them into the votive saucer together with the DHSS expenses claim form. She added some Dolly Mixture for old time’s sake and then, mimicking the criminals she had seen in films, she squirted the fluid down the front of the locker and along the floor in a trail to the door. Carefully she closed the funnel, and wrapped the tin back in its newspaper covering. She pushed the whole into one of her raincoat pockets, then wiped her hands spotlessly clean on a handkerchief which had once blown off his washing line. It said ‘H’ on one corner in red embroidery. It was very precious, but her present joy was worth any sacrifice.
Her tongue protruding with concentration, she crouched and pressed the square of linen on to the tail end of the lighter fuel trail. Hands on the ground before her, so that there was a pleasing twinge from her bandaged wounds of love, she lowered her head and kissed the relic farewell.
Away in a classroom to her right, a cuckoo clock struck midnight. Sumitra shivered. A frost sparkled on the playground tarmac and beneath her raincoat she had on only a nightdress for warmth. She rose from her pose of humble thanks and produced a box of matches from her pocket. With one neat gesture she struck one and let it fall, burning, to the soaking linen.
The flame spread along the trail with a sound like a short puff of breath. The shrine ignited with something like a cough and sent a satisfying bouquet of little flame sprays out onto the lockers around it.
Sumitra clapped her hands for pure delight and, eyes wide, began to sing,
‘Getting to know you,
Getting to know all about you.’
Pulling her raincoat about her, she scampered out to the playground.
‘Getting to like you,
Getting to hope you like me.’
Through the windows, she could make out the whiteish gold of the growing pyre.
‘Haven’t you noticed? Suddenly I’m free and easy
Because of all the wonderful and new
Things I’m learning about you …’
Hilary would live. She was in love. The cold bit at her calves on the way home, but still she lingered a while to dance.
Have you read…?
Notes From An Exhibition
Patrick Gale
When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and acclaimed body of work – but she also leaves a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel.
A wondrous, monstrous creature, she exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, though they all in one way or another reap her whirlwind, inheriting her waywardness, her power of loving – and her demons…Only their father’s Quaker gifts of stillness and resilience give them any chance of withstanding her destructive influence and the suspicion that they came a poor second to the creation of her art.
The reader becomes a detective, piecing together the clues of a life – as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient – which takes them from contemporary Penzance to 1960s Toronto to St Ives in the 1970s. What emerges is a story of enduring love, and of a family which weathers tragedy, mental illness and the intolerable strain of living with genius.
Patrick Gale’s latest novel shines with intelligence, humour and tenderness.
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A Perfectly Good Man
Patrick Gale
‘Do you need me to pray for you now for a specific reason?’
‘I’m going to die.’
We’re all going to die. Does dying frighten you?’
‘I mean I’m going to kill myself.
When 20–year–old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much–loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy’s reverberations open up the fault–lines between Barnaby and his nearest and dearest. The personal stories of his wife, children and lover illuminate Barnaby’s ostensibly happy life, and the gulfs of unspoken sadness that separate them all. Across this web of relations scuttles Barnaby’s repellent nemesis – a man as wicked as his prey is virtuous.
Returning us to the rugged Cornish landscape of Notes from an Exhibition, Patrick Gale lays bare the lives and the thoughts of a whole community and asks us: what does it mean to be good?
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The Whole Day Through
Patrick Gale
When forty–something Laura Lewis is obliged to abandon a life of stylish independence in Paris to care for her elderly mother in Winchester, it seems all romantic opportunities have gone up in smoke. Then she runs into Ben, the great love of her student days – and, as she only now dares admit, the emotional touchstone against which she has judged every man since. She’s cautious – and he’s married – but they can’t deny that feelings still exist between them.
Are they brave enough to take the second chance at the lasting happiness that fate has offered them? Or will they be defeated by the need to do what seems to be the right thing?
Taking its structure from the events of a single summer’s day, The Whole Day Through is a bittersweet love story, shot through with an understanding of mortality, memory and the difficulty of being good. In it, Patrick Gale writes with scrupulous candour about the tests of love: the regrets and the triumphs, and the melancholy of failing.
The Whole Day Through is vintage Gale, displaying the same combination of wit, tenderness and acute psychological observation as his Richard & Judy bestseller Notes From an Exhibition.
Buy the ebook here
Facts of Life
Patrick Gale
A young composer, Edward Pepper, is exiled from his native Germany by the war, struck down with TB, and left to languish in an isolation hospital. But then he falls in love with his doctor, Sally Banks, and his world is transformed. They set up home in a bizarre dodecahedral folly, The Roundel – a potent place, which grows in significance as it bears witness to their family’s tragedies and joys. The years pass, and Edward watches from this sanctuary as both his grandchildren, Jamie and Alison, fall prey to the charms of Sam, an enigmatic builder, and have to come to terms with some of the tougher facts of life.
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Rough Music
Patrick Gale
Julian is enjoying the perfect childhood holiday on a Cornish beach when glamorous American cousins arrive unexpectedly to swell the party. Emotions soon run high and events spiral out of control, with tragic consequences. Though he has been brought up in the forbidding shadow of the prison his father runs, and though his parents are neither as normal nor as happy as he supposes, Julian’s world view is the sunnily selfish, accepting one of boyhood. It is only when he becomes a man – seemingly at ease with love, with his sexuality, with his ghosts – that the traumatic effects of that distant summer rise up to challenge his defiant assertion that he is happy and always has been.
This is a remarkable, wholly recognizable story of the lies which adults tell, and of the little acts of treason which a child can commit, a compassionate portrayal of the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continu
e to assert our belief in love and happiness.
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About the Author
Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962. He spent his infancy in Wandsworth Prison, which his father governed, then grew up in Winchester. He now lives on a farm near Land’s End.
Also by the Author
Also by Patrick Gale
THE AERODYNAMICS OF PORK
EASE
FACING THE TANK
LITTLE BITS OF BABY
THE CAT SANCTUARY
CAESAR’S WIFE (NOVELLA)
THE FACTS OF LIFE
DANGEROUS PLEASURES (STORIES)
TREE SURGERY FOR BEGINNERS
ROUGH MUSIC
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