Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

The three eldest girls were the crack troops of the family. Betty and Shirley had both gone to Cambridge. “Wear their learning lightly,” Nellie said proudly to prospective suitors. (“Hardly wear it at all,” Niven said.)

When younger, Frobisher had imagined many qualities in his future wife, but he had not anticipated hysterical amnesia.

Vanda had “lost her man” early in the war. Freda thought he must have been killed in battle, but Duncan said he’d run off to Barnsley with a barmaid. “Alliterative adultery,” he said.

While she drank her tea, Nellie watched a freckled thrush tugging a worm out of a bed of red tulips. The worms would have their vengeance, for one day they would eat the thrush.

Men talked in order to convey information or to ruminate on cricket scores and campaign statistics. Women, on the other hand, talked in an effort to understand the foibles of human behaviour. If men were to “gossip,” the world might be a better place. There would certainly be fewer wars.

(She was quite expressive for a librarian. Almost Italian.

It never ceased to surprise the Cokers how willing nightclub patrons were to pitch in behind the scenes. For the novelty of it, rather than altruism. They loved a disaster.

What on earth did people see in books? They were so boring, although not the Greek myths, she was willing to make an exception for them. If only books were edible, how much more use they would be!