Alix and Liz have never before been invited to Esther’s Somerset retreat. All this is new to them. Esther has kept them away from Peggy and Humphrey: she does not like her friends to mingle. Peggy and Humphrey are away, now, in France, so Liz and Alix are allowed to visit. It is a farewell party, as well as a birthday celebration. Esther is off to Bologna, in July. She will live with Elena, and write a book in collaboration with Robert Oxenholme. So it has been arranged.
‘You can come and see me in Italy,’ says Esther, when Alix and Liz express regret at her departure. And who knows, maybe they will go. Maybe the invitation is good.
The sun begins to drop down the sky, towards the west, towards the green steep hill. The grass is loud with insects.
‘Strange,’ says Liz, dreamily, ‘that little wood we walked through, and the clearing. And the smell of artichoke soup.’
‘There is another wood, down by the river,’ says Esther, ‘that smells of curry and burned jam.’
Esther describes to them the secrets of the landscape. She tells them of the snake by the trout pond. She tells them of the heron in the reeds. She tells them of the bleeding lamb. She tells them of the lonely calf. She tells them of the woodpecker in the grove. She tells them of the primroses of March, of the rosebay willow herb of high summer, of the purple and gold of autumn. She tells them of the sliding fountain that appears, mysteriously, welling up in the green field, and disappears as mysteriously, regardless of rainfall. A secret spring, a hidden source, a sacred fount.
Alix’s eyes are shut.
‘Alix is asleep,’ says Liz. They listen to her breathing, deeply, heavily.
‘No, I’m not,’ says Alix. ‘Not really.’
They all shut their eyes. Perhaps they all, briefly, sleep, and dream.
Then they rouse themselves, and pack their basket. Alix puts the Ordnance Survey Map into her old string bag. Liz replaces her old clogs. Esther sticks a flower behind her ear.
They make their way on, along the footpath, the devious way home. The sun descends. A fox watches them from the edge of a clearing, sits its ground for a moment, then runs away into the hazel coppice.
At the top of the last steep, homeward ascent, they pause for breath, leaning on a gate. Below them lie the deep wood, the grove, the secret valley, the cottage, the wooden table, the cherry tree. Beyond are the hills, and beyond the hills, the sea. Where they stand it is still, but above their heads, high in the broad leaves of the trees, a high wind is passing. It shakes the leaves, the branches. The leaves glitter and dance. The spirit passes. The sun is dull with a red radiance. It sinks. Esther, Liz and Alix are silent with attention. The sun hangs in the sky, burning. The earth deepens to a more profound red. The sun bleeds, the earth bleeds. The sun stands still.
By Margaret Drabble
FICTION
A Summer Bird-Cage
The Garrick Year
The Millstone
Jerusalem the Golden
The Waterfall
The Needle’s Eye
London’s Consequences (group novel)
The Realms of Gold
The Ice Age
The Middle Ground
The Radiant Way
A Natural Curiosity
The Gates of Ivory
The Witch of Exmoor
The Peppered Moth
The Seven Sisters
The Red Queen
The Sea Lady
The Pure Gold Baby
SHORT STORIES
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: The Collected Stories
NON-FICTION
Wordsworth (Literature in Perspective series)
Arnold Bennett: A Biography
For Queen and Country
A Writer’s Britain
The Oxford Companion to English Literature (editor)
Angus Wilson: A Biography
The Pattern in the Carpet
A NATURAL CURIOSITY
MARGARET DRABBLE
‘Absorbing and thought-provoking’ Sunday Times
January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London and her old friends Liz and Esther to South Yorkshire. Regularly visiting a serial killer in a high-security prison, her natural curiosity in his motives and characters transforms into obsession as she begins to look to the murderer for answers about human nature and herself.
Meanwhile, now in their fifties, Liz, Esther and their friends come to question the society they live in more than ever as they navigate life in eighties London.
The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of modern Britain.
‘Confident and marvellously accomplished’
London Review of Books
‘A remarkable mixture of . . . Compelling narrative, psychological insight, generous human portrayal, acute observation, humour, horror, beauty and disgust’ Times Literary Supplement
ISBN 978 1 78211 439 0
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THE GATES OF IVORY
MARGARET DRABBLE
‘A compelling voyage into the heart of darkness’ Daily Telegraph
While opening her post one dark morning, Liz Headleand was surprised to come across a package containing part of a human finger bone.
When Liz Headleand receives a mysterious package full of papers – and a bone – she calmly recognises the handwriting of her old friend, the delicate, reticent, honourable novelist Stephen Cox who had vanished some years earlier. Sifting through the gaps and inconsistencies of memory, she begins to piece together a trail that took Stephen far away – to a bridge over a river on the border between Thailand and Cambodia and a time full of complexity and confusion.
In this sequel to The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, friends Liz, Alix, and Esther are brought together again as they unravel Stephen’s journey from London to Bangkok and Cambodia and the haunting story of what happened to him.
‘Interesting, detailed, amusing and horrifying by turns’
Times Literary Supplement
‘An engrossing story’ Evening Standard
ISBN 978 1 78211 438 3
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THE MILLSTONE
MARGARET DRABBLE
‘This tale of sexual liberation in the swinging 60s retains its power to provoke’ Observer
Rosamund Stacey has always been marked by a strange mixture of confidence and cowardice. A fiercely dedicated and resilient young woman, her future promises a fulfilling career despite the challenges of being a budding academic in sixties London. Yet in matters of love, she has been gripped by a deep-rooted, secret fear – of knowing someone physically.
But when she finally overcomes these fears, she finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand. Rosamund decides to keep the baby, facing society’s prejudice as a single mother – and is transformed in the process.
First published in 1965, Margaret Drabble’s third novel The Millstone, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, confirmed her as one of the most striking writers of the 1960s.
‘Drabble’s vision of woman’s fate remains challenging, controversial, relevant and profound’ Elaine Showalter
‘Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine’ Sunday Times
ISBN 978 1 78211 435 2
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THE PEPPERED MOTH
MARGARET DRABBLE
‘One of the more absorbing novels I have read in a long time’
New York Times Book Review
One hot summer afternoon in South Yorkshire, Faro sits at a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has travelled from London to the Northern mining town where generations of her family have lived and worked, to explore her own past.
Decades before, in the early twentieth century, Bessie Bawtry also ponders her place in the world. A child of unusual determination and precocious intelligence, she longs for the day she will eventually escape the working class life her ancestors would never have
dreamt of leaving. But like the peppered moth, will she adapt, or will she struggle as she finds herself disconnected from her inheritance?
The Peppered Moth is an absorbing exploration of the way we are shaped by our environment and ancestry, told through the story of one family across generations through the twentieth century.
‘The novels brim with sharply observed life and the author’s seemingly infinite sympathy for “ordinary women”’
JOYCE CAROL OATES, The New Yorker
ISBN 978 1 78211 436 9
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THE PURE GOLD BABY
MARGARET DRABBLE
‘Drabble’s brilliance appears here’ The Times
The Pure Gold Baby is the story of Anna, a little girl with a luminescent quality, her mother, Jess, and the community that envelops them. A happy child, Anna is the unchanging core of this journey spanning decades and continents through the lives of those that love her.
This profoundly engaging portrait of family, friendship, and the way we care for each other is a powerful reminder, if one were needed, of Margaret Drabble's literary greatness.
‘Exquisitely written’ ALICE SEBOLD
‘Unique and profoundly stirring’ Observer
‘Extraordinary and intriguing’ SADIE JONES
ISBN 978 1 78211 111 5
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The Radiant Way Page 48