My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You - Quick Reads Edition for Cityread London 2014
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Transcript of My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You - Quick Reads Edition for Cityread London 2014
Sampler containing extracts from Sampler produced for Cityread London 2014
Produced for Cityread London 2014
Moving between London, Paris and the trenches of Ypres, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply moving
and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.
Proudly supports Quick Reads
Louisa Young said: “I am so pleased that My Dear I Wanted to Tell You – a very London book – has
been selected as London’s Cityread for 2014. I hope it will help to remind Londoners of the effect of
the war on the city and on Londoners themselves. A hundred years after the First World War, let’s
remember the fighters, the victims, the services and the families, with gratitude and love and, in their
memory, with a commitment to PEACE.”
by Louisa Young
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Every April, Cityread unites thousands of lives through literature placing a book at the heart of the greatest city on earth. We warmly invite you to be part of Cityread London 2014 by reading My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, by joining us at a Cityread event in your local library, and by sharing your thoughts online with Londoners from across the capital. There are opportunities to meet the author at the British Library on 14 April and at Swiss Cottage Library on 29 April. Or you can explore London’s First World War heritage at the Cityread Family Day at the Museum of London Docklands on 5 April.
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From film screenings to writing workshops, there are hundreds of Cityread events taking place throughout April. Find one near you at www.cityreadlondon.org.uk/events, and tell us what you think on facebook/cityreadlondon and Twitter @cityreadlondon Cityread London 2014 was created by Stellar Libraries CIC and is delivered in partnership with all 33 London library services and HarperCollins Publishers. It is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.
‘Every once in a while comes a novel that generates its own success, simply by being loved. Louisa Young’s My Dear I Wanted to
Tell You inspires the kind of devotion among its readers not seen since David Nicholls’ One Day’ The Times
‘Birdsong for the new millennium’ Tatler
‘Full of drama, betrayal and addictive real-life detail’ Red
‘Beautifully realised’ Daily Express ‘This is a moving and powerful novel, one you’re not likely to forget’ Choice
Praise for My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
Also by Louisa Young
FictonBaby Love
Desiring Cairo
Tree of Pearls
Non-FictionThe Book of the Heart
A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott
coming soonThe Heroes’ Welcome
read history at Cambridge University. She is the author of ten previous
books. She lives in London with her daughter, with whom she co-wrote
the bestselling Lionboy trilogy.
www.louisayoung.co.uk
Auth
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The Borough PressAn imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011This edition 2014
1
Copyright © Louisa Young 2011
Louisa Young asserts the moral right tobe identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Some characters (or names) and incidents portrayed in it,while based on real historical figures, are the work of the
author’s imagination.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green
LOUISA YOUNG
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
My Dear Bfmt.indd 5 04/11/2011 11:46
LOUISA YOUNG
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
My Dear Bfmt.indd 5 04/11/2011 11:46
Excerpts from
9
Flanders, August 1917.
Purefoy was walking to the clearing station for
injured soldiers. Captain Fry saw him where
the planks made a crossroads, by the flooded
battlefield graveyard. Three wooden crosses
rose grimly, like King Arthur’s sword, from the
strangely smooth water. One was crowned with
a bleak skull. The rest of everything was mud
and death – and had been for weeks.
‘Can you walk?’ Fry called. Fry was a dental
surgeon in reality. ‘Good man. Keep your head
forward!’
Purefoy didn’t hear him but it didn’t matter.
He knew he had to keep his head forward.
The mud clung to his boots, weighing down
every step, but his legs were strong and the way
was obvious. Follow the duckboard planks west
to the giant burnt tooth stump which was all
that remained of the city of Ypres.
Purefoy swung his arms. Inside his head was
very hot, and he was thirsty.
The disorder around him was no worse than the
horror of yesterday or the day before; it was the
10
same chaos. Flat slimy going. Mud of blood. Blood
of mud. Oh yes. We are all poets here, he thought. He
closed his eyes for a moment but inside his head was
noisier even than outside, red and black, shooting.
No-one spoke to him.
He spoke to no-one.
He didn’t know which noises were real.
Trudge on. He wanted to undo his tunic jacket
but there was something on it, wet.
Undo his tunic? Dear God, Captain, what are
you thinking? Standards!
In his tunic pocket were seventeen beautiful
letters and Ainsworth’s prayer.
There were flies all around. I’m not for you
yet, boyo. He wanted to shake them off but his
head wouldn’t shake. He wanted to wipe his face
but his hand wouldn’t go there. He wanted to
swallow. He wasn’t sure who had bandaged him
but oh the beautiful sky.
Courage for the big things, patience for the small.
Trudge on.
Through struggle to the stars … Per ardua ad astra.
His mind raced … Struggle to the casualty
11
station. The station. Victoria Station. Paddington
Station, for Pewsey, for the Downs. Wild orchids
tiny as bees. Tiny purple leopardskin bees. Lying
among the eggs and bacon. No, they’re not called
eggs and bacon really. The brain-clearingly clean
air up there. And sheep-cropped grass, mossy and
soft. Rabbit pellets. Tiny when you’re lying down.
Bit damp still, isn’t it? Never mind, you can lie on
my coat. Tiny little plants. Vetch. Her beautiful
flesh. And the glory of sliding in.
‘Steady on, sir …’
‘You need a hand there, sir?’
Trudge on.
Something very dreadful happened today.
What, more dreadful than every day? He’d heard
somewhere that, as long as a man can mock
himself, he knows he is sane. Ah well. I’m still
not mad then. Something to be grateful for. But I
am walking through the valley of the Shadow of
Death. Don’t frighten the horses. Horses wallowing
in sinkholes of mud. Half a horse up a tree, head
shredded, legs as if it were rearing in empty air. A
grisly fairground ride.
12
And how does a rod and staff comfort me? Isn’t a
rod a staff? Or will God’s butler comfort me? God’s
Barnes. The Barnes of God. God’s Mrs Barnes,
come and take my coat. Will his housemaids give
me tea and say, “Never mind, Purefoy, sit down.
It’s not so bad.”
And the others. Sweet Jesus, the others. Sweet
Jesus - the men, the boys, the lads.
Yea, though I trudge.
What had happened? Purefoy didn’t know. He
hadn’t died. He might die yet.
The great city of Ypres stood before him. It
was craggy, empty, a vast, dark cavern. On its
once-protective walls, sharp pieces of remnant
masonry pointed upwards to God, like accusing
fingers. One or two looked like they were
shouting at the sky.
*
He stood for a while propped up against the
make-shift wall by the canal, waiting his turn.
There was a surprising little burst of clover,
13
just by his nose. It was growing from between
some hulks of grey material. Concrete, water-
logged sandbag, baked mud? He didn’t know
which. The metal doors to the dugouts open
and slam shut again. Open and slam shut
again. A little further along, the gas gong goes.
The noise seeps into Purefoy’s mind and fills
in any gaps. The doors slam. He can’t turn his
head but he can tip it a little. He can see the
graveyard, and the ambulance. Graveyard or
ambulance? Ambulance or graveyard? He hears
men shouting. He leans back and looks at the
little burst of clover. Leans forward again.
The doors clang open for him. He is propelled
in, glanced at, labelled, sent out. Ambulance –
not graveyard.
I was a soldier. Now I am the walking wounded.
I am hardly in pain. You’d think I would be. You
never know, do you?
He was glad Nadine was in London. He
wouldn’t want her nursing him.
*
14
The bouncing and jolting of the ambulance
made some of the men cry out in pain. Purefoy
held on, trying to keep everything still. The driver
was a girl. He stared at her. Her face was big and
tight, with pink cheeks and pale eyebrows. There
was pale down on her cheeks, and her mouth
was small. She was smoking and talking to
herself firmly under her breath, concentrating.
He liked her.
One of the men was saying: ‘So he told me, he
saw a hat, flat on the mud. An Australian one,
cavalry. And he didn’t have an Australian one,
so he reached out to get it, and he could reach
it but he couldn’t get it. So his mate pulled at it
too and they realised, blimey, it’s still attached.
Someone’s wearing it. So they got a firm grip and
they pulled and got the fella’s face out. And they
wipe his face and he’s alive. And they say, “Hold
on there mate, we’ll get you out.” And he says,
“It’s not just me, boys, I’m still on my horse.”’
A young lad was crying.
A dark tattooed man, with pus and gangrene
seeping through the mermaid on his forearm, said:
15
‘I heard that before.’
The first man told the story again, exactly the
same, word for word.
Purefoy was unloaded from the ambulance
and left to stare at the new scene. There were
women in big white hats like windmills. There
was mud still – but it was dried out and it was
not winning. It was being ignored. He waited.
He was propelled into a tent. What a lovely great
big canvas. He waited.
*
Somebody unwrapped the bit of field bandage
from around Purefoy’s face.
He was still young. He still had his shorn black
curls, handsome crooked nose, wide flat cheeks,
the eyes that girls like. Below these features,
his tongue flopped out, huge, straight down,
unrestricted, unhindered by chin or jaw, to his
collarbones. His mouth gaped. It was as empty
as a house with its front wall bombed off, the
interior smashed and open for all to see. At the
16
back of his mouth, his epiglottis dangled like a
left-behind light-fitting in the suddenly revealed
back room.
Someone photographed Purefoy. Above his
lips, he looked mad and shocked – like a fierce
barge convict fighting over a dispute at a lock, a
fairground man, a boxer, a foreigner. Below, there
is this ragged blossoming crater, gushing obscenely.
They washed the void, and dressed it, and tied up
what there was to tie. Someone made a hole in his
tongue and threaded a wire through, with a block
of wood hanging on the end. A cardboard label was
taken from a drawer and pinned to his uniform:
date of wound, destination, and instructions that
he must be kept sitting up. They injected him with
morphine and salt solution, marked an X on his
forehead, and gave him a small card.
He filled in the gaps with a short pencil.
To: Nadine.
Date: (He stared at that one. How could he
possibly know? The nurse wrote it in for him.)
August 21.
Injury: He crossed out serious.
17
He left the next one blank.
‘You’re meant to put the truth,’ said the nurse,
gently.
He glanced up at her from under his hooded
eyelids. I dare say, he didn’t say.
He signed: Riley Purefoy.
Bayswater, London, September 1917.
Riley’s field card to Nadine arrived at Bayswater
Road on a very warm morning. The butler,
Barnes, brought it in to Jacqueline with breakfast.
She read it, of course, and then put it down on
her tray with annoyance. Why has he sent this to
Nadine? Why not to his mother?
‘What’s that, darling?’ Robert said from behind
his Daily Chronicle. He said he read it for the
reports from Russia but Jacqueline thought he
was developing political sympathies. So far his
interest in the war had been limited to irritation
that people didn’t want to listen to Schubert,
because he was German. He thought it was
obvious to anyone with ears that his music was
18
perfect for cheering everyone up. Lately, however,
Robert had been growing excited. ‘Perhaps
communism might be a good thing?’ he had said.
‘Well it might!’
‘Riley Purefoy’s been wounded,’ she said.
‘Is he all right?’ Robert said.
‘Well I shouldn’t think so, darling, if he’s been
wounded, would you?’
Robert said nothing.
‘Well, it doesn’t say. Only that it’s slight. So I
suppose it is.’
‘Hope he is all right,’ Robert said. It didn’t
occur to him to ask why or how the information
had reached his wife, and for that she was glad.
She would prefer him to have no opinions on
the matter, because she had quite enough of
her own. So many young girls – and women
old enough to know better – were going quite
mad, sex-mad. Not Nadine, of course. But. Well
actually, Nadine might be sex-mad for all I know.
She hasn’t told me anything for months.
But she is not going to be marrying Riley Purefoy.
She needs help from her mother now to do the
19
right thing. If and when, dear Lord, this war ends,
she must be … emotionally safe. A woman’s safety
depends on who she marries – haven’t I – and my
mother – proved that?
Nadine is not going to become a war bride. She
is not going to marry in haste and repent at leisure
because of her wedding to a wounded, dashing
nobody. Even if the wounded dashing nobody is
Riley.
She ate some toast, not even bothering to be
sad about the ridiculous smallness of the piece
of butter Mrs Briggs had given her, and looked
at the paper. All bad. Dreadful. She turned the
page.
Damn! If his card has come here, does that mean
I’m going to have to write to Mrs Purefoy?
Jacqueline decided to ignore the whole thing.
It wasn’t a bad wound. It wasn’t her business.
‘Of course darling, we all hope he’s all right,’
she said.
Subject closed.
*
20
A week later, a letter arrived from Mrs Purefoy.
Dear Mrs Waveney,
I do not know if you would have heard but Riley
has been injured and is at the Queen’s Hospital
in Sidcup, Kent. I am so grateful he is out of the
way of further harm but, having not seen him
yet, we don’t know how bad it is. I wanted to let
you know as you have meant so much to him in
earlier years.
Yours faithfully,
Bethan Purefoy
Jacqueline felt guilty – a bit of a heel. But she still
wasn’t going to tell Nadine. She hadn’t sent on
the card, and she wouldn’t send on the further
news. It was her duty to protect her daughter
from a very attractive boy in very dangerous
times. The most unlikely girls were getting into
trouble. Not everyone could be a free spirit.
However, the butler, Barnes, noticed the arrival
of the card. He noticed too that it was still there
on Mrs Waveney’s bed-side table ten days later.
21
He had read it, feeling the usual flicker of envy
and resentment that Riley provoked in him. He
noticed Mrs Purefoy’s letter too. His eyesight
had not been good enough for the army but
there was nothing wrong with it that day.
Barnes had felt the changing of the times
around his dull and steady life. He and Mrs
Barnes had had some little conversations about
it, discussed some possibilities, some of his
dreams for later on, should circumstances allow,
involving savings, the south coast, and a small
bed and breakfast. And he felt quite strongly that
these people shouldn’t be allowed to get away
with thinking they could run other people’s
lives. On the eleventh day he slipped the card
and the letter into his pocket, readdressed them
over tea in the kitchen, and slipped them into
the letterbox on the corner of Queensway.
The Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, September 1917
Captain Purefoy was one of several arrivals
that day, all of them underfed, exhausted,
22
stinking and pus-faced. He was unravelled from
his bandages and stripped and cleaned; the
wholesale cleansing of both the man and the
wound. Rinsing, sluicing and drainage, carbolic
soap and clean pyjamas. The starting of the
process of putting to rights. Packing, repacking.
Tying and binding, temporary splint supports.
Holding him together until impressions could
be made for a more accurateand permanent
repair. Discussions, plans, surgeons, doctors,
nurses, orderlies, volunteers.
The young man who had been part of the
system of destruction now became the object
of reconstruction. He who must destroy had
become he who must be mended.
*
He wanted to swallow. He tried to move his
swollen tongue. They’d taken the bloody weight
off it, thank Christ. But there was new stuff in
his mouth. New alien stuff.
It took a little effort to control the line of
23
thought. He made the effort, and failed.
He could hear that he gurgled when he
breathed. He started coughing. Kind of coughing.
There was always liquid, not saliva exactly, but a
combination of whatever it was, and dried out
by the antiseptic taste.
It seemed best to go back to sleep.
*
He wanted to swallow.
Coughed and gurgled.
Pain, actually – not much. But the wrongness.
A lot of the sense of wrongness. He knew his
head was wrong. What about the rest of him?
Itch by his eye – he scratched.
Opened his eyes. Light, white, alarming. Closed
again. Hospital, of course.
Did I let them down?
Scratched again. Hands were all right. He
opened and closed his fingers, valuing them.
Well. He ran an inventory. Hands, legs, arms,
feet. Torso. Dick? He tightened the muscles that
24
could make it bounce. Was it there? Have I not
thought about this before? Is my brain shaken up?
Yes, it was there. And would it still work?
Ha ha.
Self mockery. So he was sane. I’ve had that
thought before.
What happened?
I don’t remember.
What did I do?
I don’t remember.
Did I let them down?
*
I didn’t die.
I suppose I should open my eyes.
He didn’t.
*
His mind and his thoughts were like a dangerous,
sucking bog. The words emerged and sank
again, stretching and pulling away. They meant
25
nothing to him. He closed his eyes: the black and
the scarlet, the shooting stars, the sunflowers.
Opened them: the blank white calm, the polite
living people, the words muffled in glass.
Closed them again.
‘Plenty of rest,’ said the doctor. ‘Keep him well
fed. No visitors.’
This is where I am.
He dreamed of shells lighting up the sky with
fireworks of stars, still looking beautiful, high
and silent. Starry starry night. The starshells
became the painting, and he was with Sir Alfred
at the Grafton Galleries, and everyone was saying
Oh no, oh no, oh no …
*
A nurse woke him – intelligent-looking, with a
dry look and bony hands.
‘Lunch,’ she said. ‘Lovely egg flip. Sit up for me,
would you?’
He sat up.
She held his head, found the gap in his bandages,
26
and washed out his mouth – Do I have a mouth?
– with a big rubber syringe. She tipped the waste
into a kidney basin, white enamel, white gauze –
I am fucking helpless here – and wiped his – what
there was of a mouth. What is there? She cleaned
him up. Tipped his head back – I have a neck – so
he stared up at the ceiling, and poured the slop
slowly, delicately, as best could be done from the
spout of the drinking cup into the throat.
Why am I being fed like a fucking baby?
He coughed. Kind of.
*
Scraps came back to him. Not the battle, or the
getting of the wound, but him on a train, smelling
his own infection; tasting his own wound. The
taste of his own dying flesh in his own mouth.
Throwing up, at a casualty clearing station, in
ambulances, on trains, on a boat? Delirium
separated by bouts of vomiting. How kindly
everyone had tended to him. His head wrapped
in bandages. The bloody weight hanging from
27
his tongue to stop him swallowing it.
Now he tasted of something drying, alcoholic.
‘Don’t you worry, old fellow,’ someone had said.
Surgeon? Australian voice, or New Zealand.
‘We’ll fix you up. You’re in the right place, and
you’ll be all right by the time we’ve done with you.’
He was all right. He had walked. He had,
hadn’t he? He had got through the mud – a
giant cowpat studded with corpses. He had stayed
on the duckboards, past the trees – gaunt, dead,
black, burnt, wet stalagmites ... beyond a tank –
up-ended like a shipwreck, great stern up in the
air, like a tufty duck on the Round Pond.
‘Tufted duck’, Mum said. Tufty duck’, he
insisted. Tufty duck, tufty duck. Lovely little
tufty ducks, with their bright yellow eyes like the
rings you stick on round the holes in a piece of
file paper.
All that he remembered. He remembered his
name, and – three wooden crosses upright in a
pool of dirty water.
There was something else. Oh, there was plenty else.
He couldn’t remember what had happened.
28
He didn’t know how he had been wounded. He
didn’t seem to be able to talk. Not dumb like
shell shock. (Officers don’t get hysterical. They’re
too dignified – who had said that? Oh, Ainsworth.)
It wasn’t psychological – all in his mind. He just
didn’t seem to have the equipment.
*
He dreamed he was making mayonnaise with
Jacqueline Waveney. She didn’t believe any
Englishwoman could add the olive oil correctly.
Drip, drip, drip, so as not to curdle the egg yolks.
The yellowness turned into Sir Alfred’s yellow
oil paint. The swirl, the oil. And the sunflowers
of Van Gogh. In the old days they used egg yolks
for a type of paint. Country egg-yolks for
robust complexions; city egg-yolks for pale
ladies and saints.
She’d let Riley do the olive oil dripping. Found
it funny that he was interested.
‘What are you going to do when you grow up,
Riley?’
29
‘Painter like Sir Alfred,’ he’d said, and she’d
laughed. ‘Or a cook?’ he’d said.
She laughed at that too.
*
Riley stared at the nurse to make her look at him.
She looked. Handsome eyes, she thought.
He lifted his arm and moved his hand in a
writing motion, like an officer asking for the bill
in a Parisian cafe.
‘Pen and paper?’ she asked.
He blinked.
She was pleased. He wanted to talk to her.
He wrote:
I assume I’m in hospital.
I must be. I tasted the egg. It was real. And she’s
still here.
‘You are,’ she said. ‘The Queen’s Hospital in
Sidcup.’
England!
30
He wrote:
Will I die?
‘Of course, in the end,’ she said. ‘But not of this.’
He liked her for that. He wrote:
Thanks.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Rose.
He wrote:
How long?
‘Since you arrived? A week,’ she said, and she
smiled, and said: ‘I’ll get the doctor. He can
explain.’
Chelsea, September 1917
The card, when it came. The news it brought.
Those words that were not his. His words filling
in the gaps. The card that he had touched. The
31
fact of him on the same land as her. That he
couldn’t be hurt any more now, that he was here.
And she could go to him … It filled Nadine with
a flooding energy, a magnetic, panicky feeling.
And a sense of being hurled towards him: a
physical propulsion. Reason left her mind. No
thought at all, other than ‘be with him’.
Sister recognised it, and granted her leave. One
day, in a month’s time. Nadine had physically to
restrain herself.
‘Take it easy,’ said Jean. ‘He’s in the best place.
He’ll be getting better all the time.’
‘Can’t,’ said Nadine. Her breath was quick and
tight all the time, and her knee flickered when she
sat. So many still coming in from the battlefields
of Belgium. She only had two hours off now on
a Sunday. Kent and back in two hours? She was
filled with mad fluttering joy. He was safe and
everything was possible again.
Sidcup, September 1917
A tall handsome man arrived, clean, healthy,
32
tired. There was something of one who burned
the midnight oil about him. And a medical
coolness off which women’s attempts at thanks
slip and slide, and against which men’s attempts
to match up look ridiculous.
‘Major Gillies,’ he said, introducing himself.
‘I’m your surgeon.’
I am here. Hospital. This is the reality. Hold it.
Gillies. Gillies. Gillies. Remember that.
‘How are you feeling, Captain?’
Riley thought about it. Not the slightest idea.
He flicked his eyes up.
‘Do you know what’s happened to you?’
Riley felt a tiny little snort in his nose.
‘You’ve lost quite a lot of your jaw to a gunshot
wound, Captain,’ Gillies said. ‘And we’re going to
put you back together.’
Oh. Gunshot wound. You’d think you’d remember
that, wouldn’t you?
He wanted to ask more – What happened? Did
I …? But he didn’t want to ask, as well. And – no
one can help being shot.
The tall man was watching for a response.
33
Riley had no response – or no idea how to
give it. Gillies continued: ‘This is Tonks, and
this is Marcus. The first thing we need to do, is
get a good look at you, see what we’re dealing
with here. Marcus here is going to take some
photographs, and later Tonks is going to draw
you. Don’t worry, he’s quite talented. That way,
we don’t have to disturb you more than we need,
so you can heal better. So we’re going to take a
look at you now …’
Riley had seen Tonks before. Sir Alfred knew
him. Unmistakable man: like an eagle. He
was often at exhibitions. He didn’t like the
Impressionist painters.
With unutterable tenderness, the Major unpinned
and unwrapped Riley’s face, handing the bandages
like streamers to the bony-handed nurse.
I’m so sorry but it’s not convenient, thought
Riley. I have an appointment at two thirty in
Buenos Aires.
He lay there, while they uncovered his face.
Medical words washed around him: mandible,
messeter, ramus, coronoid process. They probed
34
him gently: lifting, turning. Someone set up the
great caravan of the camera with its hood, and
its lights.
‘Because you have had an infection, we have
to let it heal up completely,’ Gillies was saying,
‘before we can get to work remodelling you.’
I am no longer a man who does things, Riley
thought. I am a man who things are done to.
Major Gillies explained: ‘You’re going to be
here quite a while, but remember, you’re not ill,
you’re wounded. When you feel up to it, take
a stroll. There’s a library up at the house. The
gardens are nice. Plenty of chaps about.’
Riley saw the gardens when the volunteer
worker took him to Tonks’s studio to be drawn.
Plodding the wooden walkways, he saw the
deep green wetness of the approaching English
autumn. The shrubs dripping in the rain. The
moss under the hedge. The collapsed browning
stems of the summer flowers. The deserted
lawns.
Tonks didn’t show Riley the picture when it
was done.
Quick Reads are brilliant short new books written by bestselling writers to help people discover the joys of reading for pleasure.
Find out more at www.quickreads.org.uk
@Quick_Reads Quick-Reads
We would like to thank all our funders:
At Quick Reads, World Book Day and World Book Night we want to encourage everyone in the UK and Ireland
to read more and discover the joy of books.
World Book Day is on 6 March 2014 Find out more at www.worldbookday.com
World Book Night is on 23 April 2014 Find out more at www.worldbooknight.org
We would also like to thank all our partners in the Quick Reads project for their help and support: NIACE, unionlearn, National Book Tokens, The Reading Agency, National
Literacy Trust, Welsh Books Council, The Big Plus Scotland, DELNI, NALA
Enjoy this book?
Find out about all the others at www.quickreads.org.uk
For Quick Reads audio clips as well as videos and ideas to help you enjoy reading visit the BBC’s Skillswise website www.bbc.co.uk/quickreads
Join the Reading Agency’s Six Book Challenge at www.readingagency.org.uk/sixbookchallenge
Find more books for new readers at www.newisland.ie www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Free courses to develop your skills are available in your local area. To find out more phone 0800 100 900.
For more information on developing your skills in Scotland visit www.thebigplus.com
Want to read more? Join your local library. You can borrow books for free and take part in inspiring reading activities.
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