The Faraway Drums
Page 32
Clive caught a chill at that Inauguration and died two days later and the light went out of my life.
So now I’m putting down the last words of these memoirs. We are at the beginning of another war in Vietnam; another Empire, the French, fell there and now, for reasons which escape me (or perhaps I’m too old to care to fathom them out), we are becoming involved. Intelligent ears will probably always hear the sound of faraway drums, Cain is still loose in the world. All I can do is pray for my grandchildren and their children. In the meantime I put on my hat each day, still a lady from the neck up, and go out into the life I still lead; and if a man smiles and recognizes me, even though he be a stranger, I see Clive and smile back. For as Toodles Ryan, Honey Fitz’s philosophical adviser, once said: memories are the dreams of the old.
End of extract from memoirs.
II
Bridget O’Brady Farnol died in Roanoke, Virginia, on 22 May 1966, aged 80, one month after the publication of her memoirs. She would have been ironically amused at the number of copies her book sold: 1911.
THE END
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Scobie Malone Series
Dragons at the Party
Now and Then, Amen
Babylon South
Murder Song
Pride’s Harvest
Dark Summer
Bleak Spring
Autumn Maze
Winter Chill
Five-Ring Circus
Dilemma
The Bear Pit
Yesterday’s Shadow
The Easy Sin
Standalone Novels
The City of Fading Light
Spearfield’s Daughter
The Faraway Drums