Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (21 page)

I am asked often if my mother’s books were based on real events in her life, and I can find more to recognise in
Blaming
than in her other novels. The story is of Amy, suddenly widowed in Istanbul, and of Martha who helps her to return home after the tragedy. In normal circumstances they would never have become friends, but Amy, made to feel guilty over her neglect of Martha, reluctantly agrees to meet her again.

My mother’s friendship long ago with someone who also committed suicide was not similar, but the real Martha was like the one in the book. As a child I can remember being fascinated by her. It was amazing that she was allowed to strike a whole box of
matches, one after the other, without my mother (who was probably dreading a comment from me) seeming to turn a hair. I watched in awe as she put the egg timer on the table in front of her at meal times and gazed at it, not speaking, just turning it over when the sand had run through. Like the fictional Martha she gave us pictures. Looking at paintings was one of my mother’s favourite occupations. She took me to an exhibition of Monet’s work and introduced me to a new vision of colour that has been a great influence on me. She said that it was wonderful because she wrote books, and this made it possible for her to buy paintings. Two pictures described in this book are ones that she owned, and she particularly liked the work of Elinor Bellingham Smith.

The little girls in
Blaming
are a mixture of children that my mother knew. One reviewer said that they were precocious; my mother just thought they were funny. She understood children very well, and because of this they loved her. She found their conversations so interesting and would talk with them for hours. She had endless patience, although after one afternoon of playing shoe-shops with my small daughter she said she’d had enough of being the poor shop assistant and was more than ready for a gin and tonic. Luckily she remembered so much that was said to her, and when she looked after my children she would often send me a note with the funniest parts recorded for me to enjoy later. Some of them are here. But Dora’s remark about inheriting the medals when Amy died was mine. During the fifties
my mother bought a lovely pale pink satin “New Look” ballgown. She came down the stairs wearing it, looking breathtakingly beautiful. I asked her if I could have the dress when she was dead and she laughed. After her death I was sorting her clothes and found a large bag in the wardrobe with a label on it saying ‘For Jo’. Inside was the dress.

Martha asks Amy what she would do if given only a short time to live. Amy replies that she would sort out her desk and go on as before. This is what my mother did, but she also worked with urgency to finish this novel. Perhaps it would have been different if she hadn’t known her fate, but she did, and she worked with courage knowing that time to delay on it was a luxury she didn’t have. She telephoned me one day to tell me that it was finished, but there was still a painful part to come. She was anxious to correct the proofs herself, but by then it was difficult for her to hold the pen. She sat in a chair with cushions propped around her and with great effort completed the task. There are a few mistakes but it is understandable that there are. She died before the book was published. Perhaps writing about death helped her to face her own, and as Robert Liddell writes in
Elizabeth and Ivy
when Dora says, ‘I think I’ve forgotten Grandpa’, she was facing another fear. She had no need; her grandchildren have fresh and loving memories of her.

Naturally I am proud of her work, but she had other talents. Her kindness, passionate desire to see people treated fairly, wonderful sense of humour, love and loyalty to her family. It was great fun being
her daughter – no one else has been able to reduce me to such a weeping state of giggles over the most ordinary everyday events.

I shall always be grateful that as well as being a writer, she was also my mother.

Joanna Kingham, Worcester, 1991

Introduced by Paul Bailey

‘An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth’ Sarah Waters

On a rainy Sunday afternoon in January, Mrs Palfrey, recently widowed, arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are a mixed bunch – magnificently flawed and eccentric – living off crumbs of affection and an obsessive interest in the relentless round of hotel meals. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. And then one day, Mrs Palfrey encounters the handsome young writer Ludo, and learns that even the old can fall in love …

‘A wonderful novelist’ Jilly Cooper

The unsung heroine of British twentieth-century fiction’
Rebecca Abrams, New
Statesman

‘Elizabeth Taylor had the keenest eye and ear for the pain lurking behind a genteel demeanour’ Paul Bailey

Introduced by Sarah Waters

‘Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. I have found huge pleasure in returning to Taylor’s novels many times over’ Sarah Waters

In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for – and in on – each other. So, although keeping up appearances is second nature, nothing goes unnoticed for very long. Beautiful divorcée Tory is secretly involved with her neighbour Robert, while his wife, consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, is oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence, however, is appalled by the treachery she observes. Meanwhile Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, gossiping with everybody who passes by.

‘Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning point in one’s experience’ Elizabeth Bowen

‘A wonderful novelist’ Jilly Cooper

Introduced by Hilary Mantel

‘Quietly and devastatingly amusing’ Hilary Mantel

Fifteen-year-old Angel knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted author and the owner of great riches. Surely her first novel confirms this – it is a masterpiece, she thinks.

After reading the novel, the publishers are certain The
Lady Irania
will be a success, in spite of – and perhaps because of – its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book: ‘Some old lady, romanticising behind lace-curtains’ … ‘Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true … she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans and in walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.’ So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them, with not a seed of irony or a grain of humour in her soul.

‘A masterpiece … Angel is a brilliant creation’
Lesley Glaister,
Guardian

‘How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time!’ Elizabeth Jane Howard

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