by Molly Keane
“Please, I want my old room,” Leda insisted.
“Oh, no, dear, you only think you do. You’ll love this nice sunny flat. And your daughter and Mrs Grange-Gorman have made every arrangement, and paid in advance. So you mustn’t worry yourself about anything. Now,” she took out a note pad and a biro, “what about supper? We have roast lamb, the first spring lamb.”
“That’s for me,” Leda said.
“And Mrs Grange-Gorman, what about you?”
“Lamb for both of us. She can’t hear a word, deaf as a post,” Leda spoke decidedly.
“Oh, it’s no trouble to write it down, none in the world.” The pretty nun advanced with her biro poised, patience and understanding written plain on her devoted face.
“French Paysan soup,” she wrote in her perfect script. “Roast lamb, spinach, roast potatoes, treacle tart.”
April studied the menu carefully. Then: “Spinach, perhaps,” she suggested. “Could there be some milk cheese – skim milk? Then a salad and yoghurt. That will be perfect for tonight. I expect my own special nature foods will be here by tomorrow evening. And could our trays be sent up here?”
“Naturally. Of course. No trouble.”
The sweet nun straightened her white cardigan and smiled her way out.
“Isn’t this nice?” April said, “so clean compared with Durraghglass. I’ll have the room with the view,” she went on, “because that doesn’t affect you, darling.” She crossed to the window. “What a nice tidy garden – perfect for pi-pi. I do think Tiger is going to be happy. Are you happy, Baby-Doll? Please say you’re happy, little man.”
“I’ld like to kill you both,” Leda wrote in a furious indecipherable scrawl and handed the message to April.
“You know I can’t read your writing.” April handed back the envelope. “Anyway, it’s time for our breathing exercises.”
“Oh, shut up if you can, you silly old bitch,” Leda screamed.
“Take a deep breath and expand your stomach muscles. Do it naturally. Then relax. Just shut your eyes and let everything go.” April closed her eyes to concentrate religiously on her own performance. The session over, she opened her eyes, to see Leda groping wildly at the bathroom door. “Wrong door,” April laughed a little. “You’ll never find your way out, darling Leda,” she said, “without me.”
Imprisoned, Leda put her hands up to her blind eyes. There was to be no escape.
VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS
The first Virago Modern Classic, Frost in May by Antonia White, was published in 1978. It launched a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works. Its aim was, and is, to demonstrate the existence of a female tradition in literature, and to broaden the sometimes narrow definition of a ‘classic’ which has often led to the neglect of interesting books. Published with new introductions by some of today’s best writers, the books are chosen for many reasons: they may be great works of literature; they may be wonderful period pieces; they may reveal particular aspects of women’s lives; they may be classics of comedy, storytelling, letter-writing or autobiography.
‘The Virago Modern Classics list is wonderful. It’s quite simply one of the best and most essential things that has happened in publishing in our time. I hate to think where we’d be without it’ – Ali Smith
‘A continuingly magnificent imprint’ – Joanna Trollope
‘The Virago Modern Classics have reshaped literary history and enriched the reading of us all. No library is complete without them’ – Margaret Drabble
‘The writers are formidable, the production handsome. The whole enterprise is thoroughly grand’ – Louise Erdrich
‘The Virago Modern Classics are one of the best things in Britain today’ – Alison Lurie
‘Good news for everyone writing and reading today’ – Hilary Mantel
‘Masterful works’ – Vogue